Non Dimenticar
by thisisforyou
Summary: Leaving a dead body behind them, John and Sherlock must run from angry relatives and policemen, remember what they used to mean to each other, get hold of Mycroft to sort things out, and maybe fall in love if there's time. Post-return. M for smut.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: 16/5/12: Just removing author-notes etc, no content changes.**

_Non Dimenticar  
>Means don't forget you are<br>My darling  
>Don't forget to be<br>All you mean to me_

God help me, I don't know how it happened, but it was an accident, I swear.

I wonder if this is how everyone feels when they first stand over a dead body they've just put there, this blind panic, this roaring in the ears that sounds like my army-doctor-ish voice of reason panicking.

No, sorry, that's John realising what I've just done and actually panicking.

"Jesus, Sherlock. _Jesus._ He's dead."

You can always rely on Doctor Watson to give you all the relevant data. I try to say something scathing, a _yes, thank you, John, I did notice, _but my mouth won't move and it feels like there's nothing under my feet and I'm about to fall.

I don't know why I'm reacting like this. I've killed, been willing to kill, _meant_ to kill before. It's not like he was a nice man – in fact, he was a violent child-molester. But it was an accident. I didn't mean to.

I manage to look up at him, his face with all its beautiful frown-lines standing out extra-sharply as he starts to really panic. "John, I… I didn't…"

Things escalate when the brother comes back into the room. I wonder, abstractly, if it's always like this, things happening so fast there's no way even _my_ brain can process it all in time to calculate an acceptable exit strategy.

The brother. Elderly, but deceptively strong. Loyal to his family. Didn't know about the fifteen children his brother used and abused in this very library. Wouldn't believe me if I told him. Should be fairly easy to overpower – I could knock him out and run – but he'd still know it was me. Everyone knows who I am after the media storms that accompanied both my departure three years ago and my return four months ago. What can we do? Lestrade's on holiday. Mycroft's on a "business trip". Carter's the DI on this case – we'd never be able to explain. The man lying dead at my feet wasn't even a _suspect_ in his eyes.

"Oh, my God," the brother rumbles – his voice sounds like gravel in a concrete mixer, but that's hardly important – "Michael. He's dead. You killed him!"

I could kill the brother too, easy as pi, and then call Carter and say I found them like this. Shouldn't be too hard to make up an excuse, a reason these two men are dead. Maybe the elder discovered the younger's endeavours over the past nine months and the fight turned ugly. Maybe I could feign cluelessness – might be a stretch – and take the case in some new direction. Frame someone else. No – bit not good, John wouldn't like it.

This situation looks uncomfortably familiar. Me, at the edge of a harsh drop with one way down and only the thin membrane of my reputation to break my fall. Jim Moriarty would be proud. Sally Donovan will have a field day. I _killed_ someone. There's a man lying dead at my feet because I put him there, a man who is no longer alive because of me.

"It was an accident," I tell the brother. I sound so calm – how do I do that? "He tried to fight me, I'm sorry." Poor John – he always has to watch these moments. He shouldn't have to see me like this – I want him always to think well of me. Three years ago, it bothered me that I cared so much about what _John_ thought of me. I've had time to think about it since then.

"John," I start quietly, and my voice is shaking now, not so calm anymore. "I want you to tell Carter the truth. Tell him you had nothing to do with it. Perry was his pedophile – I tried to confront him, it turned messy, whatever. I, um…" My voice falters. It's funny, John's the only one who ever makes it do that. "I'll come back. Mycroft'll clear it up when he gets back, and I'll come back for you."

It's not fair. I only just got back and now I have to run for my life again, run away from John, when I finally got the chance to understand the way I feel about him. I try my hardest not to cry but I'm not sure I succeed.

A strong, weathered hand shoots out to grab my arm and painfully hold it in a vice-like grip so I can't move. "Oh, no, Sherlock," he says, and his voice is shaking too. "You promised. You promised you'd never leave me again."

It's true, of course. And I never meant to. I don't _want_ to. But what choice do I have? "John," I placate quickly. The brother's pulled out a phone and I can hear him calling the police with shaky fingers. "Please, I have to –"

"No," the doctor repeats. "We're in this together. You're not leaving me. I'm coming with you."

Is it possible for that to physically tear my heart in two? Scientifically, I'm sure it's not, but what else could feel like this? "John, we'll be fugitives," I warn him. How bad is it that I'm hoping and praying with all the pieces of my heart that he won't change his mind, no matter how much I want him safe?

"Well, God knows you can't do _that_ on your own," he replies in a darling attempt at humour. "You'd never survive. Who's going to tell you to eat and sleep without me?"

I should argue further, tell him that I managed it for three years – not to mention the thirty-three before I met him – and I can do it again for two weeks until my brother gets back from Australia. I _should_. I should try to make him stay, but I can't. I'll always want John with me, and I'm selfish.

"Okay," I say finally, making a big show of weighing it up and being reluctant. "Quickly, then. Let's go."

He takes my hand – it crosses my mind that I ought to question this, but I can't, it feels nice – and together, we start running.


	2. Chapter 2

_Non Dimenticar  
><em>_My love is like a star  
>My darling<br>Shining bright and clear  
>Just because you're near<em>

Okay. Let me backtrack a bit. This morning I got a call from DI Carter, who haphazardly conducted the investigation into the hiker and the backfire all those years ago. I'm still getting used to the whole 'life as normal' thing, to the Yarders (other than Lestrade, of course) trusting me enough to ask for my help, to John looking after me and making tea and acting like nothing ever happened.

It took three months for the tabloids to leave us alone. _Back from the Dead: the Amazing Story of Sherlock Holmes' Last Falsehood_, or whatever they were calling it. I was a misunderstood, wrongly-persecuted hero. They never even thought about the fact that it was their fault a lot of the misunderstanding and wrong persecution happened in the first place.

I've given up on being bitter, anyway. Though John makes me keep a wide berth of Kitty Riley, and I caught him burning _The Sun_ before I got to read her latest accusations. He made some kind of joke about her looking exactly like the lead of some TV show who lied on her CV and doesn't know anything about her job.

The long and short of it is, every man, woman and dog in London knows exactly who I am and what I'm doing, often right down to the street I'll happen to run down at one o'clock in the afternoon. The teenaged girls are the worst, even though most of the things they say are declarations of faith, that they believed in me all along, like I care what they think. John said I should stop and sign their scarves and ear-hats they wave in my face. I wonder how much they'll sell them for now. People usually make a killing at those 'murderabillia' auctions, no pun intended.

DI Carter called at ten o'clock this morning, to get back on track, with the news that a six month-old cold case of child molestation had been re-opened because, in his words, "the bastard's done another one". He gave me a list of victims and suspects, all of which I dismissed almost immediately. Eventually, though, I discovered that all of the victims attended the same Baptist after-school-care program and that the resident Bible-basher (honestly, do Scotland Yard do _any_ kind of investigation before calling me? Because this was _textbook_) had a four year-old kidnapping rap and a few ancient ASBOs.

I think I actually jumped when John called out 'brilliant!' the first time. He practically shouted it, so proud and eager that I think he missed this almost as much as I did.

I should tell him the things I worked out when I was away. But out of the two of us, John's always been the brave one.

We ran down to Perry's sprawling house in Surrey to do a bit of covert surveillance because we didn't have enough evidence for the Yard to make a conviction. I knew Carter wouldn't just take my word that Perry was the man they were after, and I thought – correctly, as it happened – that the evidence we needed would be in his house somewhere.

He shared the positively idyllic residence with his older brother Alan and Alan's wife Shelley. Alan was in when we got there; a quick bit of acting and John's fantastic adaptability got us a spot in the library-cum-study to 'wait for Michael to get back'.

Well, he got back earlier than we anticipated. John – amazing, darling, beautiful John – tried to keep up the act he'd picked up on within moments of my instigating it, but I was bent over the bloodstain in the corner and so we had to tell him what was going on.

He didn't take it too well, obviously, and to cut a boring story short it turned into the physical scuffle of a desperate man. No-one saw it except John and I, but I pushed him aside and he fell, Derek Landy-style, into the corner of a bookshelf.

It was an accident. The mahogany corner went right through the soft spot at his temple. He was dead as soon as he hit it; a relatively quick execution for a monster like that.

I think I might have sounded like I felt guilty before, but I don't. He deserved to die, I'm sure; what he did to those children makes me sick to my stomach. It just shocked me, because I didn't mean to, and… well, to put it bluntly, I can't afford to be on the wrong side of a murder investigation right now.

They already thought I was a fraud for eighteen months before Mycroft fixed it. Now they have eyewitness accounts to prove I'm a killer as well.

Maybe I wasn't being entirely truthful to John. I don't know how much of this even Mycroft can sort out; especially if he's not taking calls for another two weeks.

Why did this have to happen when our only two allies (since Mrs Hudson's completely powerless in this case, I'm not counting her) are out of the country? It must be that thing John keeps talking about, the reason his toast always lands with the jam on the carpet when I make him jump and drop it – Murray's Law, or whatever.

Well, it sucks. Right now, running literally for my life, my whole body alight with the warmth spreading from where my palm is clasped around John's, I can't think, can't reason and negotiate a way out of this. Panic and unfamiliarity and maybe a little bit of John so close to me is making my head spin and lurch in nauseating ways.

I know why I feel this way around him, even though it wasn't always like this. Being away from him for so long made me realise a lot of things, and find people who knew the answer to the few questions I couldn't find answers to. I didn't _want_ to ask Mycroft, but in the end I was desperate. The superior, pitying look on his face made me want to vomit.

"Oh, Sherlock," he said condescendingly. "Are you really that blind? You and John… that's love."

Well, I suppose I did know that. People have pinned the label on less than this before. But I never felt it before, never knew it could hurt like this, but make me _want_ it to hurt so much.

And this definitely shouldn't be what's forefront in my mind right now. Right now, I have to focus on running – on surviving.


	3. Chapter 3

_Please do not forget  
>That our lips have met<br>And I've held you tight, dear_

We run until my legs feel like blancmange and I can't run any further. For a moment, I worry that John will think less of me if I have to stop, because he's lost weight and gained muscle and fitness in the last three years while I just lost weight, period. When I have to stop, though, he seems grateful, gasping for breath like he's just been resuscitated after drowning, bending double to make the air flow easier.

We've been here before, but we don't laugh this time. Once he's stopped looking like he might have a heart attack, John straightens up and looks around.

"You realise running probably just made it worse," he says finally. I've been thinking along those lines myself, but I just shrug. "Innocent people don't run."

I try to act non-committal, even though he's probably right. "They do if they've just left an angry brother behind," I try to justify. "They do if the public's only just got used to the idea that they're not the biggest fraud of the century. And I'm not exactly innocent, John. I _did_ do it."

He stares at me. "You don't feel _guilty_ about it, do you? _You_? Sherlock Holmes?"

It's all I can do not to roll my eyes at him. "Of course not, John. He wasn't exactly a model citizen - he deserved to die for what he did to those children."

John sort of nods as though he's reassuring himself of something. Then he stops. "What?" Forgive me for being a little confused that he sounds angrier and more incredulous than before. "You... it actually bothers you, what he did to them?"

Maybe he's... nope, I'm still confused. "I'm sorry, are you _angry _with me?"

He stops at that, pacing frenetically for a moment. I don't tell him to stop wasting his energy. "No. No, Sherlock, of course not - it's just surprising, that's all."

"How so?"

"Well... the Sherlock Holmes I knew was so clinical and detached. Rapists and hate-crimes didn't bother you. You used to be so... don't you remember? _Caring is not an advantage, caring about them won't help save them, sentiment is a chemical defect found in the losing side_? Don't you remember?"

Although his voice started out controlled and soft, by the end he's almost shouting again. At this rate, he's going to give away our position to anyone who might be looking. "Are you upset that I've changed?" I ask, trying to stay calm myself. Did he think that I didn't have feelings at all? "I thought that was one of the things you didn't like about me."

Yet again, I wonder what I've said wrong as he starts to deflate in front of me. "Sherlock," he said despairingly. "There might have been things about you that annoyed me, but there was nothing about you that I didn't _like_."

It's almost dark now, and the street-lights have come on, and John's face is half-bathed in amber, ghostly and unlined and beautiful. He looks too much like the John I used to imagine on the worst nights to let myself fall asleep, and I have to look away. I saw him like that because I'd been away for so long I couldn't remember every line around his eyes, and I've spent every moment since I came back drinking in the sight of him, reacquainting myself with his every detail. "Thank you," I say softly.

"There you go again!" he protests. "It used to take the threat of bodily harm to get you to say thank you. I'm not saying it's a bad thing that you've picked up some manners and a sense of empathy. It's just... a Sherlock Holmes who cares about strangers and says thank-you... I don't know him at all."

This probably isn't the best time to be getting all of this out of there. I've known something like this needed to be said, to fix this lingering sense of distance and mistrust and awkwardness that hung between us, but I knew he didn't want to talk about it, especialy after...

"Yes, John," I say, lifting my chin defiantly. Best get this one out of the way, then. "I _have_ changed. But I'm still Sherlock Holmes. I can still solve cases better than the whole of Scotland Yard blindfolded with my hands tied behind my back. I'll still do things that you'll call stupid and drag you into danger because I know you want to be there and then laugh with you afterwards. And if it's any consolation, John, I still don't clean up after myself or make tea or sleep, and I'll still play the violin at three o'clock in the morning and lots of the other things that make you angry."

There's a pause. For the first time, I consider that after all of this, he might not _want_ me back like this. Then he grins. "Well, thank God for that."

Maybe this is clinical shock, this constant up and down of emotion like a hormonal teenaged girl. I smile back at him. "We should find out where we are," I say briskly, looking around again.

John chuckles. "What, you don't already know?"

"I don't know _everything_, John," I snap irritably. "There's no reason I'd know the street layout in _Surrey_." As he's still chuckling, I start trying not to lose it.

That, though, is one of the things I love about John. He immediately notices that his little laugh at my expense is a bit more than not funny in the present circumstances, and backs off. "Sorry. Okay then - street sign."

We wander down to the edge of the alley, back onto the 'main' road. I've always hated Surrey; the suburbia is so stuffy as to be almost claustrophobic, _especially_ when you're lost, panicking, and trying to avoid being seen.

John spots the street sign before I do - what's _happening_ to me? - stares at it for a moment, and then collapses into giggles.

"What _now_?"

He points at the sign; apparently we're on Wysteria Walk. Well, fantastic for us. I assume he's making a joke about the street-name's phonic similarities to our current hysteric state of mind, so I manage a chuckle.

John looks at me when I laugh, so I get the distinct impression that I've missed something. "What?" I ask. "What's so hilarious about Wysteria Walk?"

"It's supposed to be near Privet Drive," he begins. I roll my eyes; that didn't help at all. "Harry Potter lived in Privet Drive. He and his cousin got attacked by Dementors in Wysteria Walk. I didn't think it was actually a real street."

I stare at him for a long time. Yup: same old John. In times of great stress, he turns to his favourite pop-culture references. "And that helps us how?"

"Well," he says thoughtfully. "I know the part of Surrey we're in is called Little Whinging."

I stop. "Are you saying you know where we are because of Harry Potter?"

If he says yes, I resolve to myself, I'll kiss him. He blushes as though he heard that thought. "Not exactly," he defers. "I don't know where Little Whinging is compared to anything else."

I carefully hide my disappointment. "Oh. Well, that's great, John."

He frowns at me. "You're using sarcasm now?"

I'm fairly sure I've always used sarcasm, so I don't dignify that with a response. I hope he doesn't bring up every little change he sees in me. I never even considered that he wouldn't like the ways I've changed - I didn't change on purpose, obviously, but I did think that everything that's changed used to be the things he didn't like.

"John, please," I start. I don't quite know what I'm going to say - it seems illogical for me to pour my heart into his hands _now -_ but this distance, this rift between us, has got to stop.

In the end it doesn't matter, because that's the moment the police car rounds the corner, sirens ablaze, washing us alternately with blue and red light.


	4. Chapter 4

I grab him and pull him back into a clump of bushes serving as a hedge - which, in the end, turn out to be some kind of brambles. I have to clap my hand over his mouth to quiet his yelps and whimpers.

I expect the car to keep cruising past, like some kind of flashy shark in the near-darkness, but it slows as it passes us and stops a few metres down the road. I look at John; his eyes are wide and fixed on me. I can feel his lips trembling under my palm - a sort of shudder vibrates the vertebrae in my spine and makes my hair stand on end and an odd kind of tingling start up in my groin.

Of all the inopportune times to become aroused.

Someone's car door slams; Carter's voice, loud and obnoxious, smashes my little bubble of John. I flinch. "Right. Wysteria Walk, this is it - you're sure they're here?"

John shifts his lips, sucking the bottom one between his teeth worriedly. That doesn't help - suddenly I have to bite my own lips to keep from whimpering as the moist underneath of his top lip touches my hand.

I wish he knew. It would make this so much easier.

"But what if he's ditched the phone?"

I blink; after a moment, I discover that I have to take my hand away from John's lush lips before I can wrench my brain away from how much I want to touch them with other parts of my anatomy and focus on Carter.

Phone - they knew I was here because of my phone. That means someone in the MET has gained some smarts and they've used the iPhone's GPS tracking, giving them a nice little map-reference. I place my money on Donovan - she was there when I did that for the Study in- for the taxi driver case. It won't take too long before they come down the alley and find us here.

Once again, there's no attractive way out. This is spectacularly unfair.

I never really liked this phone, not since the fifth time it inserted some kind of sexual innuendo into my texts to John, Lestrade and even _Mycroft_, so I slip it out of my pocket as quietly as I can and slide it under the bramble-bush behind us.

"John," I whisper. He jumps. "Your phone. Get rid of your phone."

He stares at me as though I just suggested he get rid of his pants. "They're tracking the signals from our phones. They probably have maximum clearance to bring us in so they don't have to face the media and look even more stupid - this is the second time they've trusted me wrongly. I'm sorry, John. I'll replace it."

It's the phone Harry gave him when he came back from Afghanistan; even I feel a twinge of regret as he weighs it in his hands.

"Just tuck it under the hedge," I breathe. "When they find it, they'll impound it, keep it as evidence - we'll get it back when this is over."

I keep talking about it like it's a game, an exercise with a fixed end-point. Really, I have no idea.

After another moment, he tucks the phone in beside mine. I take a deep breath. "Right. Now, quietly as you can, John - we'll see how far this road goes."

It doesn't go far. Before long it twists and turns, and as soon as we're out of sight we start sprinting. I've never liked running particularly, but right now with John's footfalls beside me and my own breath in my ears, adrenaline shoving my feet ruthlessly forward, it feels like I could run forever.

It does strike me, though, that it doesn't feel quite right without John's fiery, damp hand in mine. Probably by association - the first time John and I ran from the police together, we had to hold hands because we were cuffed together. Now it feels strange without it.

Who am I kidding? I just like it when he touches me, when he trusts me. Those tiny intimate gestures of security are what I've lived for in the past four months since I came back.

I realise a moment before the hedge runs out that we've turned too many corners along the way, but it's too late. We run out right in front of the police patrol car; considering that everyone was looking the other way down the alley, we could have been all right had John not stopped dead, bent double, and wheezed out, "Shit!"

"John!" I hiss, grabbing his arm, but it's too late; one of the younger officers turns at the noise and sees us.

"Sir!" he cries, and then they're all on us, but I don't stop to look; this time when I start running I'm still clutching John's sleeve, and he soon tugs it out of my fingers and replaces it with his own, warm and tingly. Now I swear I could outrun God.

Unfortunately, they're smart enough to get back into their police car; within a few minutes its lone siren is joined by another.

I drag John down another suburban alley and back into the maze. Of all the places for something like this to happen, why did it have to be _Surrey?_ Even if I did have some rudimentary knowledge of the street layout it'd be impossible to keep track of our impulsive twists and turns, the need to get away from Carter and the two - no, three - flanking police cars driving out the calm necessary for thinking.

It's scary, not being able to think. This isn't the first time it's happened, of course, but it's still frightening. I need to stop, just for a minute, to sort out my thoughts, but I can hear the slamming of doors and shouts, so at least one of the cars has stopped for people to search the alleys, and I'm scared they'll catch us if we stop.

Maybe we're being stupid. Maybe it would be better and easier to sit in a cell for a few days until Mycroft reads the paper and realises we need help. But where he is, there's no way he's going to care about the _news._ At least this way, they might want to keep it quiet from the press to protect their own reputations, therefore protecting mine.

It feels like we run for hours, and actually, we probably do; every time we stop for a few gasping lungfuls of Surrey night air the dark has crept up on us. I don't wear a watch and without my phone, I have no idea what the time is.

Eventually, though, the sounds of sirens fade; whether they've given up or we've outrun them I can't tell, but either way I'm grateful. The two of us slow to a stop in the alley.

"Jesus," John pants. It's the best I can do to sort of nod. The army doctor sits down, then eases himself back until he's lying, panting, on the ground. I get the overwhelming urge to lie next to him, so I do. Unexpectedly, it's actually easier to breathe like this.

After a few moments, John's stomach grumbles. The noise echoes oddly in the near-silence; he giggles at it, and then sits up.

"I'm hungry," he announces.


	5. Chapter 5

_Non Dimenticar  
>Although you travel far<br>My darling  
>It's my heart you own<br>So I'll wait alone  
>Non Dimenticar<em>

I can hardly believe it. "Seriously?" I ask. "How can you be thinking about food right now?"

"How can you _not_?" He shoots back. "I've had a piece of toast and a cup of tea all day. You haven't even had that, and to my knowledge you didn't eat yesterday, either. You need to have something, or you'll pass out."

I roll my eyes at him. "I ate yesterday when you were asleep," I lie. I have no idea what he has in mind anyway; if they're tracking my phone, God knows what they're doing to our credit cards, and where are we going to get food in _Surrey_ anyway?

He snorts. "Like hell you did. The only time you _ever_ eat is when I force you to. Do you seriously expect me to believe that you went out of your way to eat when I couldn't see you? I know you better than that."

I don't know whether I should be relieved that he's not bringing up how much I've changed again or disappointed that he's going to pursue his whim to find sustenance. "John," I try. "Food is not a reasonable request right now. We're not going to die if we wait until things have stabilised a bit."

"Well, I'll never be able to sleep if I haven't eaten. Much less so if _you're_ about to drop dead from voluntary starvation."

I actually stop dead. "_Sleep?_" He looks nonplussed. "You're actually still expecting to _sleep?_"

Sometimes I really don't understand ordinary people, not that I like to class John amongst these. Now that he's forced me to start thinking about it, I _am_ hungry, but I wouldn't even _think_ about stopping to eat in these circumstances, let alone sleep. He keeps telling me they're necessary aspects of life, and I accept that, but surely we have bigger priorities right now?

Then again, we've already stopped to have a chat about how much I've changed in the last three years. It's John and me, anyway – when have we ever been normal or taken the sensible route? "Fine." I snap. "What do you propose, then? We're in the middle of suburbia. You want to walk into the nearest Tesco when we're probably in the top ten of Interpol's Most Wanted?"

He has the grace to look slightly sheepish. "Well… it's suburbia. Most people here have cash running out of their ears. We could just… find a family who've gone out for the evening. I'm sure they won't mind donating the last of their Sunday leftovers to a good cause."

For a moment, I can't do anything other than stare at him. John, my darling ethical John – we must really be in trouble. "They might be less happy to discover that their 'good cause' is two men on the run from the police," I comment wryly when I've managed to get my breathing under control again, even if I'm not sure why John's sudden lawlessness makes my heart rate double and my breath stop. "And you say _I've_ changed – John Watson just suggested we break into an innocent family's house for dinner."

I shouldn't have said it, I know as soon as it's out there. He blinks and steps back. "I've changed, too, Sherlock," he says, in a small and broken voice that makes my heart want to self-mortify. I bite my lip until it almost bleeds trying not to hug him. After what happened when I came back, I don't think physical contact is really the best option.

"Okay," I say instead. "Well, come on, then. Let's try this street."

Well, I never said _I _minded it. I'd do worse than break into a stranger's house to make John happy. So, still listening for the return of the sirens, we wander out into the street.

It's Tuesday, some part of me remembers. It'd be easier to find an empty house if it was a weekend, but I suppose we're going to have to work with what we have.

My stomach joins John's in protest before long; I voice the fact that I wouldn't _be_ hungry if he hadn't brought it up.

He rolls his eyes. "Yes, you would," he whispers back. Just the timbre of his voice like this makes my hair stand on end. "You just wouldn't notice you were."

I'm fairly sure this equates to the same thing, but I won't say anything – besides, the house at the end of the street we're on now has no lights on and a distinctly empty look about it.

"John," I distract quickly. I almost reach out to direct his attention, but I stop myself. I'm not sure, now, whether it's a desire for his comfort or my own that makes me hesitate to touch him unnecessarily. "That house."

He appraises it with a critical eye – what is he now, the Master of Housebreaking? "All right."

I think for the sake of 'acting natural' I should say something scathing about how lucky he is that I happened to have my lock-picks with me, but I don't want to. I've bought fully into the idea now.

It's easy enough to wriggle past the front door and disable the two security cameras attached to the alarm system. If I didn't know better, I'd say John's vibrating with supressed excitement, but that's not my John; maybe it's just nerves.

The kitchen, too, is easy to find and well-stocked. John finds a Marks & Spencer bag under the sink and fills it, practically, with plastic bottles of water and fruit and non-perishable foods.

I go for the more immediate option; there's an open box of some kind of sugary cereal in the pantry, which I dip my – clean, I _did_ wash them first – hand into.

John turns around and sees me. "Sherlock!" I try to look innocent. His face contracts quickly from anger to amusement and he snorts with laughter. "You're such a child. Get your hand out of the Frosties."

They actually taste quite nice, so I instinctively clutch the box closer. John's laugh gets louder; as I grin back, the need to hug him twinges in my navel again.

Eventually he grabs the box off me and shoves a handful in his own mouth, both of us still chuckling. John scribbles 'sorry' onto the back of an old receipt and leaves twenty pounds on the kitchen counter. As hard as I try to keep it back, I smile fondly at him. I think I understand now what he meant before; even though his politeness is unnecessary and slowing us down, it's so _John_ that I love it.

As I'm resetting the house alarm, though, with John tapping his feet by the door, he suddenly freezes. "Shit. Sherlock?"

"Mmn?"

"Alan Perry is outside."

Well, freezing isn't exactly going to help. I grab his sleeve and yank until his silhouette can't be seen through the distorted glass from outside. "Shh," I breathe. "The door's locked. No-one's home. Just stay still."

He presses closer to me so that we both fit behind the solid shape of the door. My heart starts throwing some sort of orgy at the adrenaline and the press of his body into my side.

The obnoxious doorbell tone sounds somewhere behind us and John jumps; my groin finally receives its invitation to the wild party my heart is conducting.

There are moments when I look at my life from an outside perspective, distance myself from it, and laugh; this, my first murder victim's brother a plank of painted oak away from me and my rapidly stirring erection at the way John's breath pillows against my collarbone, is not one of them.

The doorbell is succeeded by a firm, harsh knock that makes both of us flinch. "Audrey!" Perry calls. My mind tries to race, but is impeded by the sound of my heartbeat loud in my ears like the baseline of rave music. _Familiarity – knows Audrey (mother?) – mistress – no – sister? – Family friend – more likely –_

"Audrey! Audrey? Please, I need your help!"

We wait, our breath catching together, until Perry takes a step away from the door. I realise I'm still clutching John's jacket sleeve and let go, my fingers cramping from the stretch.

"Okay," I breathe, quiet as I can. "In a moment, he's going to check the back door. Did you see any police, or anything?" John shakes his head, his hair rustling against my coat. "Then we're going to slip out the front. Ready?"

Sure enough, Perry makes off around the side of the house; the moment he turns the corner, I usher John out the front door and we sprint down the drive and away, until we collapse helplessly with the blissfully familiar _that-was-stupid_ giggles.

Sitting there in some alley in Surrey, scoffing hastily-made cold beef sandwiches with John and laughing, I feel guilty that I'm so happy. I wonder if it'll always be like this, if I'll never be able to think with John close to me again, if I'll always be hanging out for the scraps of praise and affection from his table, even if we ever get this – whatever it is – sorted out in a favourable direction.

Eventually, John hides the evidence – the empty water-bottle, bones and gristle – under the hedge and sighs. I'm sleepy, as much as I hate to admit it, and when John breaks into a jaw-cracking yawn my mouth instinctually echoes it.

"What are we going to do, Sherlock?" he asks sleepily.

I shake my head. "I don't know. You sleep if you want, I'll figure it out."

He eyes the ground dubiously. For the first time, I'm actually grateful for the setting; if this were a London alleyway, we'd be knee-deep in filth, but out here it's reasonably neat. All the same, I shed my coat and spread it on the ground, keeping to the side by the hedge. "Padding – lie on that."

"Aren't you cold?" I shrug; the cold should keep me awake, and someone should stay awake in case Carter comes back.

So John sheds his own jacket and curls up on my coat. After a while he looks up at me. "It _is_ cold," he says expectantly.

My body floods with warmth and breaks into goosebumps and smiles as I realise what he's implying.

It doesn't take long, with my chest curled tightly against his back, before my eyes slide shut and I'm asleep despite myself.


	6. Chapter 6

_Non Dimenticar  
>Although you travel far<br>My darling  
>It's my heart you own<br>So I'll wait alone  
>Non Dimenticar!<em>

The night I came back, John kissed me.

I'd spent the whole cab ride from Southwark imagining every possible way this could go, and I still didn't expect that to happen. Should I have? Would things have gone better if I'd thought about what I'd do in advance?

I was just so nervous. I hadn't let myself see him beforehand in case I couldn't stay away, like a bride on her wedding night, so all I had to go on were Molly's obvious lies of 'oh, he's all right' and Mycroft's stern glares, and I really didn't know what to expect. I knew I deserved to be punched, but it's _John_, so I didn't know that he really _would_ until I saw his face.

It was when he started crying that I realised just how awful I'd been to him. John _cried_ because of me. That's something I'll never be able to forgive myself for.

I just didn't think, didn't _know _– John has so many friends, and I was among the newest, and I didn't know he'd be so upset.

"_How was I supposed to move on, Sherlock?" _he said when I tried to apologise. "_What was there to move on to? There's no-one else even remotely like you. The only one in the world, remember?"_

Never in my life have I ever _needed_ to feel someone, to squeeze the life out of them until they understand the depth of my feeling for them, to wrap him in me until nothing else mattered, like I did then. So I shifted closer to him on the settee, not because I thought he needed the comfort but because _I_ needed it, and I pulled him close and he cried into my chest, and I don't think I should be embarrassed to say that I cried too.

I've always just assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage without ever understanding it, without understanding why people _insist_ on doing it over and over again. Now that I feel it, I know that all those years I vehemently tried to avoid it were just time grossly wasted.

The hug, the holding, I was prepared for, if only because I knew it was something I needed to take; it was all I'd dared imagine John might give me. But the kiss threw me off guard.

We must have stayed there for an hour, letting our sobs fade into hiccups into silence, before I felt the need to suggest I make tea.

I made to get up, but his fingers tightened until they were hurting me, so I relaxed back into the settee, at which juncture he uncurled himself enough to lean up and press his lips onto mine.

I swear, every synapse and nerve-ending in my brain imploded like a lightbulb blowing. My mind actually went blank. I'd played the imagining of this through like a rerun of _Doctor Who_, over and over in the months before I came back to help me sleep or relax, but not as something that could actually _happen._

I must have sat there like a stunned goldfish in the customary forty-second reboot, and maybe if I'd been able to string together anything more coherent than _oh, his lips are soft_ or a vague awareness of the growing discomfort in my trousers I would have responded to the kiss, and maybe then things would have ended differently. But when I came back to myself he was already pulling away and looking mortified.

"Sherlock," he stuttered, and I didn't know how to react – should I have chased his lips and kissed him right back? Maybe. But I didn't _know_. "I am so sorry. I'm sorry. That – I don't…" He got up, jumping away from me as though I'd just revealed I was carrying bubonic plague, and started backing away, still stammering out needless apologies. "I promise, that will never happen again. I'm sorry. Can we – please, Sherlock, just forget that ever happened."

My little 'John!' of protest went unnoticed as he sprinted as fast as he could up the stairs to his bedroom.

So I've pretended I have, pretended that nothing ever happened, pretended I don't care, pretended I can keep my hand off my cock when it crawls back into my mind in the small hours. Should I not have? Should I not have avoided every little brush of the fingers and prolonged silence lest I let slip how much I need him to do it again?

It almost makes me wish I'd been more interested in 'relationships' through high school and university, to have at least a little knowledge of what I was supposed to do then, and what I can possibly do now to make up for not having done it.

Sometimes I think I should just enact one of these incredibly detailed and breathtaking dreams I have night after night, march into his room and kiss and frot and whisper my way to his understanding the way I feel. But what if his kiss didn't mean the same things to him as it does to me? What if I'm working myself into a frenzy over his way of simply checking that I'm real?

All things considered, though, it's probably lucky that I get woken up in the early hours of the dawn by somebody's dog crawling under the hedge and licking my face.


	7. Chapter 7

I've somehow managed to wrap not just both arms but my entire body tightly around John, cradling him with my warmth, his head resting on my arm. The noise of the dog pushing through the bramble-hedge wakes me, so I register the position of our intertwined bodies a moment before someone's wandering mongrel swipes a hot tongue over my face and I jerk upright.

"Gladstone!"

The heavy-set, incredibly ugly brown bulldog licks its dripping jowls as John's entire body tenses before he jolts awake. Gross. I try to tug my thoughts away from what else 'Gladstone' licked before me. A woman's firm, authoritative voice calls the dog again. "Gladstone!"

I try to look like I wasn't just cuddling up to him and shove the dog away. Gladstone gives my hand a healthy long lick, pounces on the bone under the hedge from last night and lopes off gracelessly.

John yawns. "Well, that was a great wake-up call," he comments idly. My heart squeezes uncomfortably – he looks so adorable, his hair rumpled from sleep with an imprint of the button from my sleeve on his temple. I wish I could see him like this every day.

I grumble, even though grumpy is the last thing I feel. "Could have been worse," I say. "At least he didn't lick _you_. At least it was a dog, and not a person."

He snorts. "Yeah. Getting woken up by a lick on the face from a _person_ would be terrifying."

God, I'm blushing. I'm actually _blushing_. "Depends on the person," I mumble.

"True. I was picturing Carter." I grimace, but then the _image_, the mental picture of the grumpy Detective Inspector leaning over John and me, tongue outstretched, flashes into my head.

We collapse into giggles. It's odd – the fact that my body could produce anything as undignified as a _giggle_ never even crossed my mind, until John came along and made me do it three times in the first evening we spent together.

Sometimes I love him so much it feels like I'm suffocating. Like the whole of my life has narrowed down to the times I've been with him, like tunnel vision, like I didn't start living until I met John Watson.

"Right," he says finally, slapping his thighs and making to stand up. "Now we've got that taken care of. Let's walk. Have you figured out what we're going to do yet?"

I get to my feet; he gathers up the Marks and Spencer's bag and pulls out an apple as we start down the alleyway.

It's beautiful in this light, just the bare shreds of dawn with the stars holding on for dear life before the sun comes up. I've always liked this time of day.

"I think I understand why you like being up this early," John voices quietly as we turn a corner. No-one's up, and it honestly feels like he and I could have the universe all to ourselves. This is something I've always wanted to share with him. "It's… I don't know. It's beautiful."

"It's peaceful." I'd like to hold his hand, but that seems stupid. It's just a symbol, isn't it, a representation, but I _need_ that symbol. I need to _know_, to have _him_ know, that I love him and he's never going to let me go. "And I fell asleep before I could think properly," I apologise. He snorts.

"That's all right. You probably needed it. Here, have an apple." He grabs one out of the bag and tosses it to me; I catch it deftly. As usual, I'm not hungry, but I'll eat anything he wants me to, so I bite into it.

John sighs and shifts the M&S bag from hand to hand. "Well… Mycroft can sort this out, right?"

He looks at me with such wide, anxious hazel eyes that I almost say _yes, definitely_ just to reassure him. But I think I'd rather he didn't get angry with me for lying, because he'll find out eventually. I shrug carefully. "I don't know. It depends how quickly he finds out. I mean, he'll keep us out of prison and everything, don't worry, but how much we can fix depends on how much of this leaks to the media."

We turn out into a cul-de-sac furnished with a tiny suburban play-area with two swings and a miniature slide. John perches daintily on one swing and gestures for me to sit on the other.

_Juvenile_. I roll my eyes and sit on the bench opposite instead. It's sunny, so I shed my coat and jacket and unbutton my sleeves. John follows suit.

"So why haven't we called him already, then?" he asks, kicking his feet childishly.

"He won't be answering his phone. In fact, he's probably cut off all means of contact with the outside world for two weeks."

John frowns at me. "Why would he do that? He's on a business trip. Doesn't he _need_ to be able to be contacted?"

Bless him. Once upon a time it irritated me that John's brain doesn't work as fast as mine – when did I start finding it adorable instead? "John. Mycroft's not in Australia on _business._"

He stares, trying to work it out. "But he said… isn't Lestrade in Australia?"

"Yes."

"Hey, couldn't _Greg_ maybe – oh, for God's sake, Sherlock, don't give me that face."

I realise belatedly that what I'm doing could probably be classed as a hated _we-both-know-what's-really-going-on-here _face and stop. "Oh, come on, John. Are you seriously telling me you didn't notice my brother and the Detective Inspector?"

It takes a moment before I can see the facts click together in his brain like a lightbulb. "Oh! They're _together_? So… so neither of them will have phones or anything?"

"I wouldn't think so. Mycroft definitely won't want any interruptions, and I wouldn't think Lestrade would answer a work-related call if Mycroft won't, much less one from _me._"

We pass hours like this, discussing Mycroft and Lestrade and other ways we could possibly get out of this, and despite the whole fugitive thing, it's shaping up to be one of the best days of my life. This morning I woke up beside the man I love and I haven't left his side since then – what more could I realistically ask for?

"John," I say suddenly, cutting off his tirade on the practical applications of all those Bond films he made me watch all those years ago. He probably expected me to have switched off by now, so he cuts off without much surprise or indignation.

"Yes?"

I swallow. I don't often say what I suddenly want to come out with. "Thank you. For everything, but mostly for coming with me. You were right – I probably wouldn't have made it this far without you."

Gently, he lets the swing – which he'd been coaxing higher and higher until I worried he was going to push it right over the top of the frame with him still in it – slow to a stop, hops off it gracefully, and comes to sit beside me.

He's too close now for me to maintain eye contact without it becoming awkward, so I look away. For a moment I think I see a woman's face hurriedly duck behind the curtain in the house opposite, but I could quite easily be imagining it. "Sherlock," he says, his voice low and trembling and heavy with something supressed. "I'd go with you anywhere, right from the day we met, rather than be left behind without you."

I know what he's referring to, but it strikes me all the same; friends don't usually say things like this to each other, do they, but then, I've never had a friend like John before. Is this a good time to mention how I can still feel the pressure of his lips on mine? How can I tell?

Maybe there's no such thing as a 'good time', and I should just tell him before this feeling expands so much that I explode. There's no doubt that he'll find out eventually, so the best course of action is almost definitely to tell him myself and try to keep as much of my dignity as possible.

So I open my mouth to say it, to say, _John, besides leaving you in the first place, I've quickly come to regard not kissing you back that night the worst mistake I've made in my life._

My voice comes out kind of squeaky the first time, so I have to clear my throat and try again. "John," I begin. "You know, besides –"

I'm getting really sick of Carter's police patrol car rounding the corner in these inopportune moments.


	8. Chapter 8

It must have been that woman I thought I'd seen through the window. John jumps up; I try to quickly shrug on my layers of coat and jacket and take off before they can stop the car and block us off.

Bloody cul-de-sac.

John screeches to a half-halt and turns back. "The bag!"

"For God's sake, leave it!" I snap back, tugging on his sleeve again. He makes an irritated noise before following.

We gap it down the lane, but at this rate they're going to catch us; there's only one way to run out of a cul-de-sac, so they've anticipated our move and swung the car around.

There's a green-and-silver minivan parked on our side of the street; desperate, I make for that. The lock indicators on the window are up. "John," I bark, letting go of his sleeve. "That van. It's not locked, get in the passenger side."

For a moment, fumbling in my coat-pockets, I think I left my lock-picks in the M&S bag. Then my fingers close on the flat-blade.

There are a few heart-stopping moments while we get into the van and John looks over his shoulder at the rapidly-approaching police car as I jiggle the blade in the keyhole and I don't think it's going to work; the car stops behind us and John makes some sort of squeaky noise as Carter and two younger officers get out and start running, but then suddenly the flat-blade clicks and twists and the engine roars and I slam my foot on the accelerator so hard in my desperation that we bunny-hop oddly down the street before the tyres can get a proper purchase on the pavement.

"Oh, my God, this isn't helping us," John mentions when we're finally haring down the street and they've booted up the sirens and lights behind us. "We just nicked someone's van. Last night we broke into someone's house. We're not helping ourselves, are we?"

I roll my eyes. "The house was _your_ idea," I remind him. "And we'll only use the van until we outrun them. Then we'll park it somewhere, and they can pick it up and return it."

"What if they need it? Oh, God, I bet we picked the only house in Surrey where a child's just had an epileptic fit or something and the really need to get to hospital, but we've stolen their car."

A simple incredulous look quells that line of inquiry and we move on.

John's questioned my driving ability before, because I've never owned a car in my life and technically I don't have a license, but it's not exactly rocket science in an automatic.

With a few screeches of burning rubber – the van's going to need new tyres when they get it back, hope they've got insurance – we're moving faster than the police car. It probably helps that the roads aren't wide enough for them to overtake us, but I start to relax enough to think further ahead than the next bend in the road.

"Our best bet with regards to Mycroft is probably to send an email and leave a message on his phone and hope he checks them every so often to make sure the world doesn't completely tear itself apart while he's away," I say finally.

John tears his eyes away from the back window to look at me. "But we got rid of our phones."

I nod. "Yes. So that's both telephony and internet we've lost."

His face falls. "So our only real option is –"

"Yes." Another round of housebreaking.

He seems loath to talk about this, so we drive without talking for twenty harried minutes, sirens and catcalls heavy in my ears. Then John chuckles. "Well, I suppose we can get some more food while we're at it," he says cheerfully.

I stare at him incredulously; I can never quite tell when he's joking. "I'm more worried about water at this stage, but yes, I suppose."

John sighs. "And I'd kill for a cup of tea."

I allow myself to be appalled at his choice of words. "Given the situation, I'm not sure that's advisable," I tell him. He chuckles again.

"Well, maybe not kill, then. Just maim. But still, I'd like to – Sherlock, watch out!"

I jerk the steering-wheel, startled, as another patrol car hurtles out of a side-street in front of us, effectively cutting us off. "Shit," John voices. "They could have knocked us right off the road, are they trying to kill us now?"

"I think they'd probably be able to justify it, and Carter's out for blood. But don't worry, they're not going to ram us with that expensive patrol car."

John stares at me. "Oh, good," he says, a twitch of sarcasm betraying his hysteria. I allow myself a tight smile.

"It's far more likely they'll attempt to shoot us."

He continues to stare until I can't keep the corners of my mouth down anymore. "Jesus, Sherlock, it's not funny," he grumbles, slapping my arm. I don't tell him I wasn't joking, because I _was_ trying to wind him up like he thought; instead, I make an exaggerated jerk away from him and almost ram into the back of the patrol car in front of us.

"Whoops," I mutter unapologetically. Now that I'm paying attention to the road, it's obvious that the car in front of us is slowing, waiting for the right moment to twist and cut us off.

Apparently, John's noticed this too. "Shall we get out and run? Element of surprise, and all that – it'll take them a while to follow us."

I shake my head, marvelling a little bit at how I can never quite control my facial expressions around John. "No. They'll be expecting that. We're going to do something Scotland Yard never anticipates."

John snorts. "Well, that could be anything." God, I love him. "All right. So what are we going to do?"

I flash him a grin. "The obvious."

A minute tilt of the driver's head through the back window indicates that he's about to turn the car to block the road; with another grin, I twist the wheel, mount the footpath, and floor the accelerator.

With a screech, we overtake, leaving them behind. With manual gear-shifts, the time it'll take them to catch up is enough for us to lose them.

John laughs, the sudden speed pushing us back into the seats, and I laugh too, and if the windows were open and the wind blowing through our hair it couldn't be a better picture of freedom.

We drive for hours, until I can't even imagine that I hear the sounds of pursuit, until the sun sets in a garish blaze of orange and we're left driving through the poorer part of Surrey in the dark and the quiet.

Eventually we park the van. "Right," I say. I feel like I should have keys to flick casually over my shoulder, but I settle for tucking the flat-blade back into my coat-pocket with a flourish. John notices and chuckles. "The next street should do it, John; even if they find the van, they'll expect us to get as far away from it as we can."

In the next street there's a house with no lights on; it's becoming almost routine to pick the lock and disable to alarm. There's an old, bulky PC in the living room; John hovers at my shoulder as I boot it up and tap my fingers on the desk, waiting for it to load.

A toilet flushes somewhere in the house. We freeze; the noise is coming from somewhere out the back, but even so, the light should have been visible from outside. Why didn't I _see_ it?

I let out my breath quietly. We'll just have to wait for them to go back to bed and move quietly. It's all right. _Breathe, Sherlock._

Behind me the computer all but _screams_ its welcome tone and the slow shuffling footsteps – old woman, carpet slippers – halt and reverse direction. I look at John, and his hazel eyes are awash with panic.

The light clicks on.

"Oh, good Christ, dears, you mustn't do that to an old lady! My heart near gave out!"


	9. Chapter 9

There's something familiar about her, but I've never seen her before. John, too, is staring at her, slack-jawed. He looks like he's about to pass out.

"Er... we don't... we're not..."

She smiles and waves her off. "It's alright, love. I know the difference between criminals and decent people in a spot. If you were burglars, you wouldn't have turned the computer on - you would have just taken it."

It's irrational, but when her voice turns out to sound so much like Mrs Hudson's, I immediately feel safe. "Thank you," I breathe shakily. "We only wanted to send an email to my brother, and perhaps use the telephone and the bathroom."

Her smile is quickly becoming the most radiant thing I have ever seen. Besides John's smile, obviously. "Of course, dear. Are you in a hurry, or can you stay for a cuppa and tell me what's happened to make you two well-dressed gentlemen break into an old woman's house to use the computer?"

John, at the mention of tea, exhales noisily. "You might be the best woman I've ever met."

She chuckles knowingly; she thinks we're together. I know I should correct her, but the knowledge that we're still close enough for people to make that assumption makes me glow with pride instead.

"Well, you sit down, then, and I'll put the kettle on. I'm Abigail - have you eaten?"

As she busies herself in the kitchen, John turns to me. "Did that just happen?" he says in a low voice. I'm wondering pretty much the same thing, so I reach down and pinch the back of his hand. "Ouch!"

"Yes," I can affirm. "That just happened."

We sit down at the kitchen table; John tries to help Abigail make tea, but she shrugs him off rather violently.

"So," she says cheerfully, plonking a mug in front of each of us. "Who are you, and what's happened to you?"

John takes a sip of tea and sighs dramatically. "I'm John, and this is Sherlock," he introduces. "We're -"

"Oh!" Abigail exclaims. "Sherlock Holmes and Doctor John Watson! I know who you are - my sister Martha's your housekeeper, she talks about you all the time. The detective with the consulting business."

Of _course_ she's Mrs Hudson's sister. I can't believe I didn't see it before. "What? Martha _Hudson_?" John repeats incredulously. "You're Mrs Hudson's sister? God, Sherlock, we must be the luckiest people alive."

"Lucky?" I repeat cynically. "And Mrs Hudson's our landlady, not our housekeeper." I try and fail to keep a straight face.

John laughs weakly. "Yes. _Lucky_. Don't even try to pretend you did this on purpose."

I shrug. "So," Abigail repeats sternly. "What's happened to the two of you to bring you all the way out from Baker Street looking like you've been sleeping on the streets for three days?"

So John explains right from the beginning; from Perry and Carter and the bookcase right down to parking the van and needing to contact Mycroft. Of the two of us, he's the storyteller, so I sit back and listen; before long I've closed my eyes to better listen to the benediction of John's voice.

"Are you all right, Sherlock?"

I let my eyes flick open again. It's strange, but I'm tired again, and all my limbs feel heavy and sore from last night in the alley. "I'm fine," I sigh anyway. I shouldn't love it so much when John worries about me. "We need to -"

John almost spills tea all over himself as the doorbell rings; Abigail clutches her nightdress tighter around her body and tuts irritatedly. "Who's calling at this time of night?" she says indignantly, getting up.

"It'll be the police," I tell her. "I hardly need to remind you that you haven't seen us."

She tuts again and gets up. "Don't you worry, love. You two go into the bedroom and strip the bed. I'll be in in a moment with some clean sheets for you. I'm _coming!"_ she screeches towards the door.

"Sorry, what?" John asks, standing up too.

"Well, my bed's a double, and the spare's only a single. You two deserve a good night's rest. Off you go."

For a moment he looks like he's going to argue. I really hope he doesn't. Sleeping in a proper bed, _with John_, seems beyond a dream. Then he smiles gratefully. "Thank you so much, Abigail."

"Yes, yes," she tuts. "Now go on, go!"

So we do; she trots off to the front door and I hover, catching her indignant _it's very late, officer, I was almost in bed_ and Carter's dry growl. Then John grabs my arm and drags me towards the bedroom. My heart sort of flutters, like an excited child bouncing on the balls of their feet.

After a few moments she totters back into the bedroom, laughing gently. "Policemen are not what they used to be," she laments. I raise an eyebrow coolly. She's clutching a set of fresh linen, a pair of grey cotton pants and black pyjama trousers. "You two are going to shower before you sleep in that bed," she instructs. "And I'll wash your clothes, so you sleep in these - they're a bit old, but they'll hold up. That suit and your coat will need to be hand-washed and pressed, dear -"

"I'll do it, Abigail, don't worry," John cuts in.

I stare at him indignantly. "I can wash my own clothes, you know."

He snorts. "I'll do it," he repeats. "You have the first shower, and I'll write the email to Mycroft and start washing, and then you can finish that and use the phone while I'm in the shower."

Well, I have to admit that makes sense. John's more likely to be polite in an email - and, to be honest, would probably do a better job of my suit - than me, whereas my voice is probably necessary to kick Mycroft into action, not least because I know John calls Mycroft all the time since I came back to ask for advice on how to treat me, whereas the last time I asked for his help was almost three years ago, so he'll know it's serious if I do it. And a shower sounds absolutely incredible right now. "Okay. Thank you."

Abigail scrunches her face up at me in an expression that quite clearly says, _you two are adorable._ I return her smile in as much of a long-suffering, _yes-that's-my-boyfriend _manner as I can.

John rolls his eyes and follows me into the bathroom; to my dismay, the laundry is linked to the bathroom by a doorway with no door. "Right," John says briskly. "Trousers, jacket and coat in one pile, shirt, pants and socks in the other." He doesn't say _strip, _but the demand sort of hangs in the air anyway, making it entirely impossible for me to obey the unspoken order without embarrassing myself.

When he's gone, I get out of my clothes shyly, making sure there's no way he could walk past the doorway and see me. I'm not usually self-conscious about my body, but then, I've never shown it to anyone who's caused any kind of reaction in it before.

He comes back into the room when I'm in the shower, the half-frosted door firmly shut behind me, steam billowing onto the glass, to pick up the two piles of clothing. I jump and automatically move to cover myself, but he pointedly doesn't look in my direction.

Then we've got a problem. The shower glass is frosted from about my chest downwards, but trying not to think about the fact that if John would only look up, he'd see me naked and staring at him, is like the whole _don't think about elephants_ routine, which really doesn't help the increasingly desperate situation downstairs, as it were.

_Fuck. _I slide down until I'm sitting in a foetal position in the shower, with my head on my knees and my erection throbbing insistently between my legs. I stifle a groan - why does this have to happen _now_?

John hears the noise anyway. "Sherlock? You okay?"

My cock jumps at the sound of his voice; I bite my lip until I taste blood to stop myself from making any kind of noise. "Sherlock?"

"I'm fine," I manage, even though I'm not. I've never needed him to know as badly as I do now, but how can I tell him and still expect him to share a bed with me tonight?

_That _thought doesn't help either. This throbbing, twitching problem between my thighs isn't going anywhere on its own. The warmth of the shower is so comforting and inviting - but there's no way I'll be able to keep quiet if I get rid of it _that_ way, and besides, I can't just masturbate in Mrs Hudson's eighty year-old sister's shower with John in the same room.

Ohh, _fuck._ My head hits the wall of the shower - that thought somehow propelled my hand to wrap around my erection without say-so from my brain, and the contact, the friction, the _pressure_, starts to eat away very quickly at my self-control.

_No. _With a sigh, I force myself to stand up and turn the water to cold.

A while later, after we've emailed and phoned Mycroft - using rather more instances of 'please' and 'sorry' than I would have on my own - eaten, at Abigail's insitence, and consumed about a million cups of tea, all while studiously occupying my mind on what needs to be done rather than the fact that John and I are both dressed only in one loose-fitting item of someone else's clothing, we collapse into bed.

I find it strange how tired I am _again_, but I think suddenly that if I could always sleep like this, beside John, then I could maybe get used to sleeping _every _night.

He lies on his back, so I arrange myself on my side for the best view of him. He's bound to fall asleep faster than I will, and then he won't notice me staring; he looks so beautiful when he's asleep.

"Well," I say once we're settled and John reaches up for the lightswitch. "It's good to know there are still people out there prepared to believe the best of people instead of always assuming the worst."

"Mmn," John agrees. "Even if they are all eighty years old. I still can't get over the fact that she's Mrs Hudson's sister. I mean, of all the houses in Surrey."

I murmur acquiescence; I have to agree that it's astronomically lucky. I'm perhaps luckier now than I've ever been; maybe another set of circumstances would see me less grateful to be clean and comfortable, but no matter the circumstance, I'll always feel this lucky to be in bed with John. Last night in the alley we'd been wrapped around each other, but somehow this feels _more_ intimate, between the sheets together, warm and clean and at least half-naked.

"John," I can't stop myself from murmuring. "I'm really glad you're here with me."

His hand reaches out until it finds my shoulder under the covers, then trails calloused fingers down my arm. I shiver and bite my lip; I was never the hair-trigger type - well, I was never _any_ kind of type before John, but now I find I have to fight to stop myself from responding to his touch.

His fingers find my hand and he slips his palm into it, soft and warm. "Me too, Sherlock," he says quietly. "Me too."


	10. Chapter 10

_The first thing I notice is what I'm wearing._

_It's not because I care about that a lot. Well, I'd be a fool to argue that I'm entirely selfless, I suppose, even though nobody ever thinks they're arrogant. It's just that in my case, it's justified._

_But I notice what I'm wearing because it's enormously uncomfortable. And that isn't the worst part._

_Conveniently, I'm standing in front of a full-length mirror, and I can see it in all its awfulness and for a moment I feel like screaming. There I am, me, all normal and grown up with a body that I actually fit, and clothes that emphatically don't. _

_I'm wearing my old school uniform. And it's still too big, and the shorts are too stiff and scratchy and the disgusting grey shirt smells strange, the collar poking awkwardly into my chin._

_Out of habit, I try to flatten my hair and fix my collar; one side of my too-big shirt is untucked and I can almost hear my mother's voice ringing in my ears._

You look disgraceful, Sherlock! If your brother ever left the house looking like that…

_Her voice has this amazing power to make me feel small. I almost want Mycroft, but I know he won't even attempt to offer comfort beyond telling me exactly what it is I should fix about myself until Mother is content. No, I want something else, something more._

_I want _John.

_The room I'm in is disgustingly ostentatious, like the drawing-room from a BBC period drama, and so as soon as I see the door – tiny, inconspicuous, tucked away behind a portrait of some quack in a pea-coat – I make for that. However I got here, John must be here somewhere._

_The noise hits me as soon as the door is open; the sheer wave of mindless babble almost knocks me off my feet. I cringe at the bright, yellow light, and then I recognise the place._

_It's the dining hall from my high school, and it's full of a thousand boys in the same uniform yelling down the long tables at each other, alternating between stuffing bread into their mouths and throwing it at the boy opposite them. _

_I cannot imagine anything worse, and I make to turn around immediately to go back to the quiet, solitary room with the mirror and get rid of these infernal shorts. But then I see him, sitting on a chair to the sides of the tables, completely alone, facing me and smiling._

John.

_He's my John, like me, grown up but dressed down in the same crude shorts and grey cotton shirt that looks as though it's never been washed in its life. It's jarring, something as familiar as John's face in such an alien setting._

_He beckons to me, and I go, until I'm standing in front of him. Where my ill-fitting school uniform only looks ridiculous on me, John's seems to fit him fine and he actually manages to look good; I almost want him to stand up so I can get a look at his arse. _

_"John," I say, meaning to ask him what's going on, what he's doing here, but he reaches up, grabs two handfuls of my arse and yanks. _

_I yelp in surprise and lose my balance, falling forwards onto his lap with a noise that most emphatically isn't a squeal. "John, what -"_

_"Ssh," he says, pressing a calloused finger to my lips and shutting me up fairly effectively. "Don't draw attention to us." _

_It comes to my attention that this resembles some kind of perverted role-play that partners do to explore each other's sexual kinks. And then, of course, that thought shoots a bolt of heat through my body and settles between my legs. I bite my lip and try to keep my face neutral as my cock stirs and grows, rubbing uncomfortably against the stiff fabric of the school shorts. I don't want to look John in the face because I'll give myself away, not that he'll take long to notice anyway; I'm literally sitting right on top of him and my darling doctor isn't that _unobservant. But his strong hand reaches up to my chin and directs my head until I'm looking right into his bottomless hazel eyes, and when I see they've got that look, the little mischievous look he gets when he's just hidden his laptop or made himself a snack he knows I'll like and plans to eat in front of me, I realize to my utter dismay that I'm completely hard. __

_And that I'm not the only one. _

_My pupils dilate as I watch their reflection in John's eyes. His hands are still on my arse, and as he watches me react to the realisation that he's aroused by this, he gently tightens his grip until he's squeezing me and I can't help but squirm forwards and rub our erections together._

_"Oh, God, Sherlock," he whispers into my ear, arching his neck to be able to graze my earlobe with his teeth. _

_I'm panting; every breath I draw in seems to be devoid of oxygen until I feel light-headed. "John," I gasp, holding on to his shoulders so tightly I must be leaving bruises. _Don't let me go__. "John, what are we doing? They'll hear us and notice."__

_John chuckles, low and sultry, and good God_ the noise goes straight to my cock. I rock forwards again helplessly; the friction feels so incredible I hardly care if anyone sees. "Then you'd better keep quiet, hadn't you?" __

_He thrusts his hips up against me and I have to bury my head in his shoulder to muffle my yelp. When I breathe in like this, all I can possibly be aware of is John_; I can smell_ him, that hot smell of John-sweat that he gets when we've just run halfway across London, the one that makes me excuse myself and run to the bathroom as soon as we're back at the flat to stop myself from jumping him. It's so strong now, so overwhelming, that I almost come just from remembering all those times when I'd run away and stroked myself off frantically from the memory of him leaning against the wall and panting and giggling_ with that smell still lingering on my clothes.____

_"Oh, John_," I whisper now. His lips are still on my ear, blowing hot air down my neck, and he chuckles again. I'm grinding my hips down against his with the rhythm that he's using to grab handfuls of my arse, not sure if I want to move away from the touch or towards it, because it's strange and unfamiliar but it's John_ and it feels so good.___

_Then he bites down on my neck and I'm lost, some part of my mind throwing down the reins in disgust at the pathetic way I'm thrusting against him and whimpering; I've lost all sense that there are people around us, all sense that they could at any moment notice that there are two men rutting frantically against each other just a few metres away from them. There's just John and the friction of his cock forcing mine against the coarse fabric of the shorts, and it's so delicious that every time he makes one of his little grunty noises I think I might come, and I'm only just holding on because I want this to last forever._

_One of his hands leaves my arse and I feel lopsided; I pull my head off his shoulder to ask what he's doing when he covers my lips with his own and I'm kissing him, I'm _kissing John__, and then his hand's pushed down between us so that I'm thrusting my hips against it and it's wonderful, I'm holding onto his shoulders so hard my fingers hurt because I'm afraid to let go. __

_There are fingers on the zipper of my school shorts and I must not be wearing any pants because suddenly John's bare hand is rubbing straight up against my cock, and the shock of it, of John touching me, of _John's hand on me_,_ tips me quite suddenly over the edge. __

_It fills me up until it's all I can do not to scream, John, John, I'm going to come, I'm going to -_

The orgasm is so powerful it wakes me up, my teeth clamped around something soft, wet warmth gently seeping through Abigail's spare pants onto the mattress under me.

God, that's embarrassing. I groan quietly into whatever it was I bit down on, hoping desperately that I didn't wake John. Or cry out his name at any point. Oh, God, how can my body do something so cruel?

It's John's tiny whimper that alerts me to the fact that what I've clamped my teeth on hard enough to bruise is in fact John's bad shoulder, what I thought was the mattress I'd been thrusting my hips into as I came is in fact somewhere in the vicinity of John's hip, and after all of that abuse it would be damn-near impossible for him not to be awake.

Well, fuck.

The shock - I think it's shock - paralyses me for a moment. What the hell are you supposed to do when you're lying practically on top of your best friend with your teeth-marks making rather aesthetic rings around the bullet-wound in his shoulder and your borrowed pants slowly becoming fused to his with come?

"Sherlock," he mutters after a moment. That's when I realize I probably should have moved by now.

I scramble frantically away from him, my feet connecting with various parts of his side on the way, until I'm sitting on the edge of the bed facing pointedly away from him. I don't think I've flushed this red in my life. The only thing that could possibly make this worse would be if DI Carter burst in right now and arrested the both of us. _Fuck._

What am I supposed to say? "Sorry," I start pathetically. I didn't know it was even possible for my face to turn any redder, but it does. "I'm so sorry, John."

"Don't be," he replies immediately. "It's hardly your fault your body's got chronic timing."

It probably is a bit, actually, letting myself fall asleep drunk on the intimacy of it all, but I'd like to agree with him so I do. "How badly did I hurt your shoulder?" I say. To add insult to injury, my voice abandons its usual baritone hum and goes for a pubescent pitch-swoop instead.

He lifts the arm and gives it an experimental swing. "It hurts," he admits. I'm glad he doesn't try to dismiss it as nothing - I think that would be more embarrassing, to know that he's trying to spare my feelings, to think that my feelings _need_ to be spared. "But you managed to bite around the scar, rather than through it, so I'll live. You okay?"

That throws me for a bit. Does he think I was having a nightmare? Did he not feel the heat against his thigh that couldn't plausibly be anything other than semen? Jesus. "I'm fine," I say shortly. I can feel him nodding.

"Okay."

I barely have time to register the shifting of blankets before he's beside me, a calloused hand gently touching my shoulder. I'm so aware that my back's bare, the most vulnerable I've ever been around him. Is it weird that I kind of like it? "Hey," he says gently. His smell - that _smell - _surrounds me and brings back terribly lurid memories, but I can't bring myself to pull away. "It's just me here, okay? I know you... don't do this stuff, but it's honestly okay. It's only me."

I neglect to mention that _only him _is the problem. "Thank you," I say stiffly instead.

He gets up then, treating me to the view of him walking around in only someone else's pyjama pants. Then he giggles. "What are you going to tell Abigail?"

I honestly hadn't thought that far ahead - getting past John knowing had been my priority. I shrug. "She knows Mrs Hudson," I say wryly. "She already thinks we're together."

"What, so you're going to blame it on me?"

Considering it was his fault, I don't think that's really too much to ask. Suddenly I'm battling not to laugh. I try not to look at him, because I know I won't be able to hold it back if I do. I can feel his eyes boring into the top of my head as I struggle to keep a straight face.

One little snort of laughter escapes of its own accord, and after that I give up; I look up at John and he's laughing and it's too much, it's not funny, I can't believe I'm _laughing_ about this but I am, and it actually feels nice.

"Can I ask what you were dreaming about?" he asks. I freeze.

For a moment I almost tell him. _You, it's you, always and only you, my John. _

"High school," I say finally. This almost sets off another bout of wild laughter, but John wouldn't understand what I was laughing about this time, so I hold it back with difficulty.

He gives me an amused sort of smile. "I see," he says. He thinks it was some kind of memory, an awkward teen fumbling of the kind that I never really had back then, that I never _wanted until now._

We both jump as Abigail knocks on the door. "Yoo-hoo," she says brightly in the _exact _tone that Mrs Hudson uses when she wants to make sure she's not interrupting. "Did you two sleep all right? I made eggs for breakfast."


	11. Chapter 11

"When we get this sorted out," John says, turning back to give one last grateful smile to the woman watching from her living-room window, "we are coming back to visit here, with the biggest gift hamper we can possibly put together."

John's wearing an old rucksack that Abigail dug out of the wardrobe in the spare bedroom and filled with bottled water and fruit and an old blanket; she even went so far as to make sandwiches. I hardly think a 'gift hamper' covers any of what she's done for us.

She wanted us to stay, too, to 'hide out' there until Mycroft and Lestrade get back, but who knows what the police would tell the media if they had no sign of us in the six days before they're due back?

It still smarts, really, that my brother can be off in Sydney somewhere shagging his boyfriend on a beach and I'm stuck here in a perpetual state of agony having wet dreams on top of John.

I should just tell him. _John, that dream I had last night…_ I can see that going well. And yet I've expended so much effort trying _not_ to tell him that it almost seems like a waste. I know that the awkwardness, the little chasm that I couldn't quite patch together when I came back isn't _gone_, even though it's shrunk. I can still feel it. But is that just because I've been keeping so many secrets? Can he even feel that gap, or does he think everything's fine?

We agreed we couldn't stay in one place and just wait. I tried to come up with some kind of plan last night but I wasn't exactly thinking straight; we have to do something.

But what can we do?

"We'll have to go back to London," John says eventually, after we've walked for about an hour in our own silences, mine dithering helplessly between uncontrollable memories of my dream, of the feeling of rutting against John, and being tugged back to trying to formulate some course of action. With all that going on, it takes me a moment to realise he's said something.

"Hmm?"

"London. Everything we could possibly do to help ourselves is there. Scotland Yard, Mycroft's office, Baker Street, Heathrow."

I was nodding slowly, but he loses me at the last one. "Heathrow?"

He looks at me. "Yeah. Well, it's an option, isn't it? We could always just fly to Australia and drag them back ourselves."

I snort. "What, you think they'll let us through Heathrow? Without arresting us?"

His face falls comically. "No, probably not."

"Obviously not."

Now, suddenly, I _know_ he can still feel it, because it digs its heels in like a petulant child and sits heavily between us, an elephant in the alley. But what am I supposed to do? So I ignore it, pretend it isn't there, and keep walking. We turn into an alleyway backing onto a huge stone building that looks like maybe it used to be a school. London, I force my brain to plod through. Scotland Yard. Mycroft's office.

The rucksack hits the ground; I turn around to look, panic rising in my throat, but it's only because he's dropped it. He's shaking out his arms and clenching his fists; I flinch automatically in case he's going to punch me again. That last comment of mine was rude, wasn't it?

"Right," he says briskly. "Let's get this over with."

Do we need bruises that I don't know about, or does he mean that he's wanted to pummel me to death since I got back? "Get… what?" I stutter. He makes an impatient noise and rolls out his shoulders.

"_This!_ This… thing, between us. Let's get everything out _now_. We both have things we need to say; let's just do it now."

Oh, John. What am I supposed to say? "Why now? This has been happening for the last four months."

"Yes, and aren't you sick of it? I want my best friend back, Sherlock. I thought I had him but I don't, do I?"

All right – the sentence 'I want my best friend back' shouldn't have made tears prick behind my eyes. I almost wish we could just go back to what we were before this thing happened, before I realised how much I _needed_ him. "Okay," I say. "You, um… would you go first?"

He narrows his eyes at me. Isn't it a part of being British and male that we don't talk about our feelings? He's the one that's used to _having_ feelings in the first place. This is new territory for me. I _need_ him to go first so I know how. "Fine," he says finally. I lean against the building behind me as he starts pacing, a little tower of misdirected frustration like a kettle left on the boil. It's adorable, but I try not to smile.

"Sherlock," he says, in a voice that's so carefully controlled it sounds fake. "When you left I… it felt like… it was like coming back from Afghanistan, only… when I came back I was half-dead. I _wanted_ to be all-dead. What good was I, with one arm and one leg and a bunch of memories that came back every time someone slammed a door? My life was completely worthless. If you hadn't come along, I have absolute confidence that I would have killed myself by the end of the month."

I didn't know that. I didn't know how close I came to losing him before I ever found him. Would I have lived my whole life, then, thinking I was happy but not really knowing what 'happy' meant? "John –"

"Shh, Sherlock, please, let me finish. When you died, it was just like that only there was no _you_ to save me. There was just Mycroft, watching me all the time, and every time I tried to put a gun to my head or take too much pain medication, there'd be someone there, one of his people, and they wouldn't let me."

This I did know, because Mycroft took great delight in telling me. I even saw some of the surveillance footage.

"And then you came back," he says, looking up at me, his fists clenching. "Then I found out that all of my grieving, all my suicide attempts, all that _hopelessness_ was a lie. You know, I always thought… I mean, you ran off without me and never listened and never told me your plans and _acted_ like you didn't care, but I always thought, if it _mattered…_"

"I was wrong." I've been thinking it since the moment I left England, but it's not something I admit often, even to myself. "I wanted to protect you, I thought – I _knew_ they'd kill you if you knew I was alive, and I didn't want to waste time worrying about whether they were after you. I was trying to protect you, but I shouldn't have. I should have had faith in you – after a few weeks we could have staged your suicide, too, it wouldn't have been hard given… and then you could have come with me. I'm so sorry, John. I knew I'd made the wrong decision the moment I couldn't go back and change it. I regretted not telling you every day I was away, but it was the logical course of action."

His fists clench even harder at the mention of the word 'logical'. I know a part of him is insulted that I still chose logic over him, but I don't understand it. What I did, it was the best thing to do, for him, with the resources that I had. I don't know what else he wants from me. "John," I plead. "I don't know – how can I make this better? Whatever you want me to do, I'll do it, just _please _– I need us to get over this."

I swear, by this stage I'm almost hysterical and I'm seconds away from blurting _everything_ out – but I hardly think the knowledge that I've fantasised about him for the better part of three years, even when he's there with me, is going to help matters. He sighs. "What is this, Sherlock?" he says weakly. "What's the matter with us?"

"I don't know," I lie. Is it a lie, though? What I feel for John, I've never felt it before; it's such a tangled hotchpotch of emotions I'm not familiar with wrestling for dominance with stray arms and legs flailing out to crush my internal organs at inappropriate moments that I can only classify it as 'love', and even that is so ambiguous. "I don't know – John, all I know is that it took me three years to do a job that would have taken me six months if I could have bounced ideas off you instead of wasting time watching you and worrying about how badly I hurt you and how much convincing I'd have to do before you took me back. All I know is that I could hardly breathe without you, and when you let me in again, it was like waking up from a nightmare."

All I know is that I want to grab him and kiss him and smother him until I'm covered in him and he's covered in me and everyone knows we're not to be taken apart, but I don't say that. It'll come off as too possessive; John never struck me as the type who'd want to be _owned_ by somebody.

That scares me sometimes – whatever it is I feel for John, it's the strongest thing I've ever felt. What if it's too much for me, or too much for him?

"Oh, Sherlock," he says, stepping forward and throwing his arms around me, so tight I almost start to believe he won't let me go. Then he stiffens.

"Anthea."

Forgive me, but I don't follow the train of thought that got him from 'oh, Sherlock' to 'Anthea'. "What?"

"Anthea – Mycroft's assistant. Would she have an emergency way of contacting him or something?"

It shamefully takes me another moment before I link 'Anthea' with the young brunette who's acting as my brother's PA. Although, when I first met her she was going by the name of Jocasta. "Oh," I say eloquently. "_Oh!_ That's _brilliant_ – even if she doesn't, she can help us, or fly to Australia for us and get them! Oh, John," I exclaim without thinking. "I could kiss you right now!"

He stops and looks at me, his eyes steely and serious. My heart sinks. Did I say something wrong?

"You know I wouldn't mind if you did, right?"


	12. Chapter 12

He's staring at me with a sort of fierce determination. I start to feel a little bit trapped. "Kiss me, I mean," he clarifies. "I wouldn't mind."

My breath catches. _Well, in that case… _I take a step closer to him, but then I stop; I don't know _how_. How am I supposed to kiss him? I have no idea what the protocol is. Do I go for soft and gentle and chaste, to keep him comfortable and not completely scare him away? Or do I kiss him like I want to, hard and bruising and _desperate_ because I think I need him so much right now I might explode?

I've just decided to try chaste and gentle and started leaning towards his mouth when he sighs and steps away. "Sherlock," he says tiredly. I refrain from punching the bricks behind me – have I been too slow to respond _again_? Will I ever be able to move fast enough for him? He raises his eyes to meet mine, and they look defeated. "What would you say if I told you that I love you?"

He sounds like he already knows the answer, and surely he does. It's not a particularly hard question – I _know_ he loves me. We're best friends, he said so himself; he's killed for me before, he ran away with me. Of course he loves me. So I try to answer honestly, because John's always valued that. "I'd probably say something scathing about your need to constantly state the obvious."

Yeah – John's always valued honesty, _except_ when tact would have been the appropriate option. Was there an expected or polite answer to that question? I've never been asked it before. My knowledge of this topic is assigned on a need-to-know basis, and I've never really needed any of it before. I try to backtrack, thinking furiously. What else is there? "There'd be other things I'd _want_ to say, but they may seem somewhat hypocritical of me."

"Hypocritical?" he says, folding his arms adorably and frowning up at me. "How so?"

I give him an _it's-not-that-hard_ face. "They're also obvious."

And it's true – I've wanted to tell him that I love him too every moment of this stupid goose-chase. But it's obvious that I do – I jumped off the roof of St. Bart's for him, didn't I? Because that's what it boiled down to, in the end; I feel slightly sick admitting it, but I could live without Mrs Hudson or Lestrade. I couldn't live without John. It's second nature to do things for John that I wouldn't even consider doing for other people, little things, like making coffee in the mornings when he has to get up early. For some reason he associates making coffee with an apology – would I _still_ be apologising for hurting him if I didn't love him?

He returns the face. "You know how things – _most_ things that are obvious to you, other people don't understand?"

"John," I reprimand, rolling my eyes. He _can't_ have not noticed. "Give yourself some credit."

The faintest hints of a smile curl up the ends of his mouth like paper warping in the sun. "Humour me."

I huff out a sigh. "I suppose if _pressed_ I might say 'I love you, too'."

He draws in a breath, like he's shocked – I don't _believe_ he didn't know that already, though – and when he lets it out, he lets himself smile like he's been holding it back. "Sherlock?" he says.

"_What?_"

"I love you."

I don't know why hearing something I already know gives me a sort of thrill through my arms and chest, but I roll my eyes. "Obvious." And it _is _– we've always loved each other. It's the _kind_ of love that we're having issues with – well, _I_ am.

His grin widens until it's positively radiant. "You love me too."

My look this time is meant to convey _yes, and?_ "Also obvious."

John sort of giggles helplessly. He's grinning like a nutter. I don't understand what he's so happy about – this doesn't fix any of our problems.

"I'm going to rephrase what I said earlier," he says after a moment, still beaming at me. "_Could_ you kiss me, now, please?"

_Oh._

I slip my hand against his jaw, just so he knows I'm not going anywhere in case I'm too slow for him again. Then – _slow and gentle and chaste – _I bend down to press my lips to his.

We meet sooner than I expected because John lunges forward, and the bump of his mouth against mine makes me squeak in surprise. With this distraction, it takes me a moment to realise that we're kissing.

_Oh my God. Oh my God._

It'd be really nice if my brain could do something productive right now rather than squealing like a teenaged girl. This is a situation where I really _need _it – without it I'm going to make a complete fool of myself. I don't know how to do this; his tongue on my lips feels nice, but when I open my mouth to reciprocate he slips the muscle right _past_ them and sucks on my bottom lip. I can _taste_ him, the same way he smells only more intoxicating, and I'm hard already.

I wish I'd done this before so I could know a bit more about what to do, how to… make it last longer. I never knew how completely my mouth was linked to my cock; every swipe of his tongue against my lips or tongue makes my groin tingle and twitch.

The attention of his mouth is all-consuming, and I can't _think_ or feel anything else; the entire focus of my 'giant scary brain' has narrowed down to his lips and teeth and tongue on mine, his strong hands on either side of my jawbone, the scratchy slide of the too-small place where his chest shifts against me as he gasps for breath, and the embarrassing strength of the burn _already_ between my legs; little spots of consciousness like blips on a radar that add up to one huge emergency.

When he lets me go – too soon – I stagger backwards helplessly until my back hits the wall behind me, my hands reaching out automatically to the rough stone to make sure that there is _something_ that still exists that's _real_. His eyes are wide and almost black, but I must look terrified, because he looks up at me and his face falls, all the lines that seemed to have disappeared settling back into the skin of his cheeks and forehead. "I'm sorry," he says, and I wonder if déjà-vu always feels like nausea. He's _not_ going to do this again; he _sees_, but he never _observes_, the way my pupils are so dilated I can _feel_ them, and my legs are shaking and I'm breathing like there isn't enough air in Surrey for the both of us to stay alive. "Oh, Sherlock, I'm sorry – I thought you…"

He makes as if to turn away, but I won't let him – I lunge forward and grab his arm, wheedling and disgustingly desperate. "No, John, please don't," I gabble, marvelling abstractly at the mess of syllables that pour out of my mouth. "You can't do this again, John." I don't know how to make him believe me, because apparently the fervour with which I was trying to kiss him back wasn't enough, and suddenly if I kiss _him_, now, the way he kissed me, it would feel like assault.

"Do what?" he asks, and I can _see_ the 'what' bouncing sickening answers behind his hazel eyes. I shake my head. He _gives up_ on me so quickly I never have time to react.

"Panic and run away before I can say anything," I explain, letting go of his arm to let it sink in. He blinks a few times, like he's trying to clear some kind of film away from his eyes. "You did this last time, too – you move too fast for me, John. This is all… I've never done this before. Not like this. It takes me longer than you to… work everything out and react the right way."

Although, my cock seemed to get the idea that first time he kissed me, so it's having no problems _reacting_ at a speed the rest of my body can't quite process. At least John's in sync with _one_ part of my anatomy. "What do you mean?" he says now.

Even I'm not quite sure. "I _do_ want this. And I wanted it then, too. But you ran away before I could tell you and you didn't… _look_ at me, John. Isn't it _obvious_, the way my body reacts to you, how much I want…"

I stop because he's shaking his head. "Your body wanting isn't the same as your mind agreeing. I know you don't like admitting that you have emotions and being human scares you. I don't want to force you into anything you're not comfortable with."

"You – this is my mind agreeing, John. I _want _this. _Please_." I almost don't believe he's doing this. But he's John – always concerned about me, looking after me, making sure he isn't hurting me even a tiny bit. "God, I love you so much," escapes of its own volition. "You make me come alive. And you're right; I'm not used to having emotions and to… being… sexual, and I'm not exactly comfortable with it. But I want it. Look at me, John, I'm lucid. I'm saying yes. I'm saying _please._"

There's more, lots more; once I've opened the hitherto unexplored channel between my heart and my mouth there's a veritable flood of sentiment tumbling out. But I open my mouth to take a breath before I get onto how long I've wanted him, and then his tongue's in my mouth and the wall's at my back again, and he's pressed up against every inch of me, and _oh God_, he must be able to feel just how hard I am, still, from just that kiss, and that really should be turning me off with embarrassment but it's doing exactly the opposite. Whatever hypothetical switch is being _turned on_, John has flipped it so hard and fast it must be permanently broken.

"Sherlock," he murmurs, sliding his cheekbones down my face, rubbing against me like an affectionate cat. I hum vaguely, the only response I can manage, but he doesn't say anything else. Without warning, he bites my jawbone, a warm thigh slipping between my legs; my hips rut against it automatically, seeking the friction of denim against cotton, drawing somewhat pathetic-sounding whimpers out of my mouth. "Look what you do – what you've _always _done to me." He grabs my hand – still scrabbling for purchase on the wall, still trying desperately to ensure the continued existence of reality – and places it between his legs.

_Shit. _

I can feel the heat of him, even through the layers he's wearing. My mouth falls open; he's almost as hard as I am, and the _feel_ of him is beyond anything I could have imagined. "John." His hazel eyes flick from my own hardness to my eyes, and he smiles.

"Tell me if you want to stop, okay?" he says gently. I think at this stage that's mostly impossible, but I nod helplessly anyway; anything to distract him long enough to get my hand away from his erection and around to somewhere on the other side of him so I can pull him closer to me while I'm still touching the wall. He notices, one sandy eyebrow making a temporary bid skywards.

He presses his face into the hollow under my jaw, his nose assaulting the pulse-point, his tongue darting out to lick the sweaty seam of skin joining my face to my neck. I'm emphatically glad I had to shower again this morning, embarrassing as that might have been.

"Please," I gasp against him. "John, please..."

He bites my neck, gentle at first, slowly increasing the pressure between his teeth until he's leaving perfect teeth marks in my skin. Payback, perhaps, for mine still adorning his shoulder. "What? Tell me what you want, my love."

I can't, because I'm still not entirely sure. I want _everything_, but that doesn't seem practical in the here and now. And to be honest, I think if he just stepped back and looked at me I'd come anyway from the tension and the way his pulse is making his jaw twitch and the idea of his eyes sweeping over my skin, the skin that's already so close to release just from the metaphor of him possessing me, visually undressing me. "I... I don't know. Anything. Everything."

His pupils visibly dilate at the last part. "Everything?"

"_Everything. _I know it's not exactly practical and we don't... but I..."

He leans back in and kisses me again, and whatever sentence I was half-heartedly trying to form becomes background static. "Well, we'll see how we go, shall we?" he whispers. At least, I think that's what he whispers. It's hard to hear him over the rushing of my blood in my ears that's so loud it almost sounds like the sea.

The button on my jacket is undone and his hands are fisting and scratching in my shirt, sliding like a frantic skier in an avalanche down my belly and to the waistband of my trousers. There he stops, looking up at me for confirmation I can't muster the bodily control to give him. I try to convey _yesyesyes_ with my eyes the best I can. That seems to work.

His hands graze against me as he pulls at the button and zipper on my trousers, still stiff and surly from their recent pressing, and I'm so hard that the zipper sliding down my trapped cock sends gasps and whimpers out into John's soft, sandy hair. His eyes meet mine again as he grasps the elastic of my pants and trousers and pulls; I cry out at the tightness of the waistband and then the cold of the air. The general temperature of the alley must skyrocket from the heat now radiating freely from my crotch.

John chuckles and occupies my mouth again. "Shh," he murmurs. I whimper again. His fringe scrapes gently along my cheek as he looks down between us, one hand shifting, reaching.

"Don't touch it," I gasp out quickly. He frowns; I take his hand and move it to my bare hip. I can feel every graze of his rough hands on my skin, the heat my body is expelling like it's going out of fashion meeting the crisp autumn of the alley and making every inch of flesh sensitive. "I can't... I don't want to..."

He seems to understand, nodding shortly, digging short fingernails into my hip, keeping a modicum of distance from my groin as he kisses me again.

"Sherlock, I don't have anything we can..."

"I don't care," I say quickly. It'll hurt, but I want to feel him. "We'll just take it slow, John, please." I think I may have doubled the number of times I've ever said 'please' in the last ten minutes.

He looks mildly nervous, but his hand leaves my hip vulnerable to the cold anyway as he brings it up to his lips. I'm not sure it's quite hit him yet that we're in a back-alley in Surrey where anyone could walk past and see us. When he stares at me and inserts two fingers into his own mouth, I can feel the beginnings of orgasm building in my stomach; I bite my lip until I draw blood, desperately thinking of Margaret Thatcher, Mycroft in the bath, Margaret Thatcher and Mycroft in the bath together...

John's cold, wet finger probes past the warm space between my thighs. "Spread your legs," he tells me softly.

I do my best with my trousers still at mid-thigh, and it's enough for the finger to slip between my cheeks and find my entrance, the cold unfamiliar and electrifying; John's finger circles the pucker a few times, lazily, and then - and then -

And then I come. Quite suddenly, amazingly, copiously, narrowly missing John's jacket as he twists out of the way in surprise. It's blistering, destroying, lifting me three feet in the air and shaking me around a bit before dropping me, gasping and trembling, back against the wall in the alleyway.

The image of _Anthea_'s face if we turned up at Mycroft's office with my come all over John's jacket flashes in front of my face, but the blush is for a completely different reason. "I'm sorry, John," I mumble when I've regained moderate coherency. "I wanted to hold on but I... you…"

His finger at my lips cuts me off sharply. "Don't ever apologize," he orders. "You're beautiful, Sherlock. I didn't actually think either of us were going to last long enough to go all the way." he reaches for the button of his jeans, slipping it open and easing the zipper past his obviously-uncomfortable erection.

I reach out - still keeping one hand pressed against the wall - and pull him close, slipping a thigh up against his crotch. He grunts and ruts against it quickly; I can't resist the urge to lick up the line of his cheekbone and down to his ear. He moans.

"John," I venture after a moment of this. "Do you... Can we still..."

He stills the movement of his hips; I can feel the muscles in his back straining to control them. "Are you sure?" he asks seriously.

I'm a person who's usually one hundred per cent sure of my actions and intentions, but I don't think I've ever been as sure of anything as I am that right now I would really like that cock inside me. "Yes." God, yes.

John's chest heaves as he takes a few deep breaths, not moving, the silence stretching between us. "All right," he says finally. "But, Sherlock, I'm not comfortable… taking you… without anything to make it easier. I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't if you go slowly," I try to assure him. I'm sure it will, a little bit, despite this, but I don't want to make him any less sure about doing it. When he still looks determined, I cast about desperately for other options. "Have a look in the bag and see if there's anything we could use."

His face twists into a wry smile, but he steps away and tugs with a little more ferocity than necessary at the zipper on the bag, plunging a hand into the rucksack's depths and rooting around. I find my eyes slipping down his back to his arse, still mostly-clad in his jeans, just the very tantalising top of his two round cheeks peering out above the waistband. Thinking about this, about him, about what he's about to do, desire injects itself back into my bloodstream.

His hand closes on something and brings out a little bottle clothed in a large yellow Post-it note. "That minx!" John exclaims. I blink at him. Does he mean Abigail? _Minx_ is a term usually associated with women who are open and provocative with their sexuality – I wouldn't call that lovely old woman a _minx_ at all. "You're not going to believe this, Sherlock," he tells me, bringing the bottle over to where I'm still braced shakily against the wall with my pants down. "Look."

It looks like some sort of mineral oil, but the Post-it is what makes me bark out a quick laugh. In her tight, slanted script is written, _Just in case._

_Minx_ starts to look more appropriate. "Well… that could be an embarrassing one to thank her for later," I comment wryly.

He laughs, and I reach for him as he reaches for me like we've been doing it for years. We fit so nicely into each other it seems strange that we haven't always been pressed against each other, strange that the dips and bumps in my body that curve exactly around the bumps and dips in his _weren't_ actually moulded there over years of the two of us in the same position, strange that my mouth really _wasn't_ made for his tongue or my neck for his face and that each of his artifices fits so neatly into my orifices is pure coincidence when it seems so perfect.

I want him naked, but it's cold and we're completely in the open, so I settle for my hand in his jacket and snaking up the inside of his shirt to tangle in the dusting of hair on his chest before dragging it back down, cataloguing the increase in temperature as I get closer to his erection.

He bats my hand away from it quickly, his breath hitching and rushing out in a whimper. "Don't," he breathes. I can't suppress the smirk. Perhaps to distract me, he pushes at my trousers, still bunched around the middle of my thighs. "Get these off," he orders, so I stamp at them until they pool around my feet. It feels extraordinarily deviant to be standing in an alleyway still fully dressed in shirt and jacket and coat and socks and shoes, bare from my waist to my ankles. I almost laugh, but then John's hand is back between my legs, stopping briefly for a lazy caress of my renewed cock before assuming its previous position gently massaging around my entrance.

It doesn't hurt as much as I braced myself for, but it's not exactly comfortable, either. He groans as the first slippery finger slides in, burying the sound in my skin. "God, you're so _hot_," he murmurs. I'm not really; it's just that his finger is alarmingly cold. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I tell him. His lips attach themselves back onto my neck, biting and licking and sucking the same spot over and over as he gently slips another finger into me. A tiny noise of discomfort escapes my lips; I bite them to keep them shut. I can feel the stretching of the muscles in my sphincter burning around his fingers, almost pleasant but not quite, like loosening up cramped muscles in your back after a night on the settee. His kisses turn gentle and loving, smothering the little square of skin with affection as my body slowly adjusts to accommodate the wriggling and scissoring of his fingers.

Then the wriggling and scissoring brings him into firm contact with what can only be my prostate. "Guh!" I stutter senselessly, my hips and cock jerking upwards involuntarily as my abdominal muscles contract against the pleasure. If I hadn't already lost control earlier, there's no way I would have survived that. As it is, there's a fully hard erection poking demandingly into John's shirt. He chuckles.

I hardly even notice the third finger, preoccupied as I am with the first two teasing the flesh around the bundle of nerves, but as soon as I know it's there I breathe deeply with relief. "Now, John," I insist. "Please, take me now."

He bites me again, groaning through his teeth and sliding his hand out and away from me, taking a step back to find the bottle in the inside pocket of my coat where he stowed it earlier. The cold air rushes into the space he leaves behind, lifting the hairs on my stomach and legs upright, tingling my hot skin. I can't even begin to think about how long I've waited for this vision in front of me, of John dribbling yellow oil over his fingers and stroking them down his – _oh, God _– proud, flushed and _beautiful _erection.

"_Sherlock_," he whispers as he strokes himself.

If it came from anyone's lips but my own, I would categorise the noise I just made as a whine. "Now," I manage to breathe, hooking my hands around him and tugging him back to me. He laughs breathily, his lips hitting my cheekbone painfully as he falls off-balance. His rough hands touch my outer thighs, running gentle lines of cold up the muscle to rest just below my bottom.

"I'm going to take your weight," he prepares me. "If you wrap your legs around my waist, I've got you."

It strikes me that I would never trust another person enough to let them hold me off the ground, even with my back pressed into a wall. But I suppose at this stage in the process it's moot anyway, given my somewhat unorthodox state of dishabille. I would never trust another person with _any_ of the things I give to John.

I lift one leg to hook over his hip, my cock rubbing intoxicatingly against denim – I suddenly want to try this, another time, with him in jeans and me naked rubbing against each other – and his hand moves to cup my arse, pulling me closer to him, reassuring me. _I've got you. _When I lift the other leg he's there, lifting me up and settling my weight against him. I could spend all day like this, my head resting on his shoulder, cradled and secure, if not for the feeling of fabric rubbing against my cock as he breathes quickly and shallowly in and out making it _imperative_ that we move things along a little faster.

"Are you ready?" he asks gently, shifting me in his arms until I can feel the hot skin of him nudging against my opening.

I huff impatiently. "Of _course,_ John. Hurry up." It strikes me as soon as it's too late to recall the words that they're a bit rude, but he just laughs, his fingers tightening on my arse, guiding himself into me.

It hurts for a while, and I can feel every muscle in his body straining with the effort of holding himself back, but my body adjusts to his girth soon enough and then he's there, inside me, hot and hard and heavy_. _I have taken a part of him inside my body; we're connected, he is in me physically as well as just metaphorically. I breathe out shakily into his shoulder. "Oh, _John_."

"_Sherlock_." The reply is instant, tense, desperate. He doesn't move.

"You can move," I tell him, shifting my hips from side to side.

He mewls and digs his fingers into me so hard I can feel the bruises forming already. "Don't – just give me a minute." We stay there, hanging like suspended animation for a moment, John's hand stroking sensual, comforting circles at the join between my buttock and my thigh. I think I can feel his heartbeat in the throbbing of his cock.

Then he gently rocks his hips forward. There are so many nerve endings down there, so much stimulus, that I can only clutch him tighter with the hand that isn't on the wall behind me and try not to make too much noise. His breath is hot and damp against my ear as his slow rocking becomes the slick slide of his cock in and out in shallow thrusts. I know he's trying to go slowly, to make it last, but when he does finally pull almost all the way out and then thrust back in firmly, jolting my back against the wall, grunting softly, it's all I can do not to cry out in relief.

With his next few thrusts I let my head fall back and put more weight against the wall; his hand reaches between us again but he misses what he was aiming for, because the slight change in angle means that when he thrusts forward again he slams solidly into my prostate and my hips buck forwards, my muscles clenching around him.

"Hnnh – Sherlock!" John gasps, his cock giving one last resounding throb before warmth blooms deep inside me. The _feeling_ of his come, hot and wet, easing down around his cock to drip down my thighs, makes me cry out, too loud. He claps his palm over my mouth – a reminder, _keep quiet or it's all over –_ and keeps moving through his orgasm, panting, and I can feel my own climax building, _again_, is it even _possible_ for a second orgasm to follow so close on the heels of the first?

But he's slowing, pulling out, easing me down back onto the pavement; my legs don't support my weight properly, there's not enough blood-flow to the muscles below my waist. My pathetically desperate panting noises echo so loudly in the alley I experiment with holding my breath so we don't get discovered, even _if_ John seems to think we're finished –

_Oh. _

I close my eyes to focus on controlling my breathing, and when I open them again he's on his knees in front of me, staring up at me as he opens his mouth slowly; I shove my free fist into my mouth to stop myself from yelling out at the feeling of his hot breath on my cock.

The moment he closes his mouth around me I'm done for. "_John!" _makes its way around my fist, and I'm leaving teethmarks in my own skin but I couldn't possibly care because John's tongue is cradling the underside of my shaft and he's still watching my face as he swallows my orgasm, his hands running soothingly up and down my thighs.

It feels like it lasts forever; every time I think I'm coming down I make the mistake of looking down at him and have to bite down harder against the new wave of pleasure. Eventually, though, he pulls off gently, wiping his mouth, and stands up to take me into his arms.

I might possibly be crying with relief and the sheer _weight_ of my feelings for him. "Would it be too cliché to reinforce that I love you?" I ask wearily. He huffs out a laugh into my shoulder.

"How do you think clichés became clichés, Sherlock?" he replies, lifting his head to press a closed-mouth kiss to my lips. "Because they feel good." One calloused hand reaches up to brush a sweaty curl away from my face, a gesture of affection that's a cliche in itself. "I love you."


	13. Chapter 13

Eventually, I need to say it, as much as I don't want to sound needy and pathetic and all the other things I seem to be around him. "Promise me you'll never let me go," I whisper. I think it's okay to be pathetic around John, because he's _John_, and I think what we just did stands testament to how much I trust him and what I trust him _with_.

"I promise," he says gently, his fingers and arms tightening around me. "I'll _never_ let you go."

"I love you, John."

I don't know why he likes hearing it, but when he finally pulls away from the hug and starts to refasten his trousers, he's grinning. "Yeah, I love you too. Come on – we've got to walk all the way to London this morning."

Did I mention I hate walking? I probably did, considering the amount of it we've done in the past few days. But John shoulders the rucksack again – I should probably offer to carry it, but it looks heavy – and takes my hand, holding it in his still-sweaty palm and I almost don't mind.

Almost. "I think we should assume that the MET hasn't gone to the media yet – which is the likely course – and take the bus."

He laughs. "All right. Your shout."

Given that I fully intend to shout at Mycroft until he covers everything we've spent – including Abigail's gift hamper – out of his own pocket, I think I can live with that.

At the bus shelter, he doesn't drop my hand. It's interesting that people do this, because physically it doesn't feel particularly nice since both of our hands are hot and sweaty and they're sticking together awkwardly, but that just reminds me of _why_ we're hot and sweaty and I don't want to break this point of contact, this – for lack of a better word, I'll use a deplorable one – _sentiment._

Even so, I dither for a moment. I'm not sure he'll appreciate it if I attempt to initiate another _cuddle_. For a while I just look at him, but he notices me staring. I go to apologise – it's rude, apparently, to stare at people for too long – and he leans forward and presses his lips to mine, a quick, chaste kiss.

"Is that okay?" he asks when he pulls away.

"Of course," I reply, taken aback. "You can do anything to me, John." It seems logical to surrender my body to him, given that he's the only one who can make it feel _human_. And given what he _did_ with it last time I surrendered it to him, it's probably the most pleasurable course of action, too.

To my surprise, then, he frowns. "No," he says. "You can do what you want with me, but I will _always_ tell you if I don't like what you're doing, or I don't want it at that moment, and I expect you to do the same. Okay?"

I don't hesitate. "All right."

The bus comes. John gets on first, so I can watch the set of his shoulders as he steps up. He was uncomfortable with the idea that I would just lie back and let him do what he wanted with me. That wasn't actually what I meant, but I find I'm not averse to the idea. For a moment I worry about this; what have I become if I'll do that for someone else?

But it's only John. It's not like I'll lie down and think of the proverbial motherland for just anybody. He must know that.

He sits by the window, so I sit timidly next to him – it's stupid, I know, even _teenagers_ can do this, but I don't want to cuddle him if it's not welcome, so I ignore it; instead I try to surreptitiously lean closer to him under the guise of staring out the window.

Of course he notices; when he finally turns to me and yanks me closer, wrapping an arm around my shoulders tightly, I almost sob in relief. "Thank you."

He grabs my chin and turns my face towards his. He looks almost sad, or pitying, like he's upset at _someone else_ that I don't know what to do. "I will _always_ want this," he says gently.

There's a man sitting two rows behind us who keeps staring; I turn around and glare at him. For today, at least, I'm allowed to be fiercely possessive. He looks away quickly.

Plain-clothes policeman. Mobile phone in his left pocket. Thinks he recognises us? Or he's been _looking_ for us.

"John," I mutter into his jacket. "Two rows back, left aisle seat. Don't let him see your face."

He doesn't question it, which makes me irrationally proud. "All right." But I wonder if it'll be enough – can we do something to ensure he _won't_ look at us rather than just try to hide when he does?

"Actually…" I whisper. "Maybe we should…" I lean up, twisting in my seat, and scoop my lips onto his mouth hungrily.

"What are you doing?" he asks when I pull away.

I cast a glance at the policeman – sure enough, he's got his eyes resolutely fixed on his own window. "Making sure he's not watching us. Shh. Don't say my name."

He responds when I attack his mouth this time, so it's much harder to focus on the policeman, but he still places one strong, calloused hand on my chest and pushes me away. "We can't do this," he hisses. "People are watching."

"No, they're not, that's the point," I hiss back. "They're embarrassed, so they're trying as hard as they can not to stare."

"Well, that old lady isn't trying very hard," he protests. His hazel eyes slide to the right; I turn my head under the pretext of nibbling at his jawbone and sure enough, an intricately-permed pensioner blinks unabashedly back at me.

John and I look at each other and dissolve into giggles. Emboldened, I move to straddle him, not daring to spare a glance for the policeman. I don't think he's still watching.

He slips his hands up from my knees to my thighs, leaning up to kiss me chastely. "The things I do for you," he whispers, making me shiver a bit.

"Yeah, it's all my fault," I grumble, but only because he knows I don't mean it. After all, most of it _is_ my fault.

I think I possibly enjoy the bus ride-ful of lazy, warm kissing more than I cherished the earlier stint in the alleyway. Possibly. Maybe not, actually. But this is certainly more comfortable and I could without doubt spend a whole day doing it.

But eventually the lights of London call an end to it. The policeman is out of his seat before I've even properly realised that we've stopped, distracted as I was by John's warm hand up my shirt and brushing against my nipples. "John," I murmur, extracting him and standing up. "Get ready to run, he might have called the others. We're heading in the general direction of number Nine, Downing Street."

He lifts an eyebrow at me. I shrug. "Somebody's got to live there."

So we get off the bus and blink out into the bright cloud of Paddington Station. It seemed a bit off that they wouldn't stop near Whitehall; the policeman, standing alone by the railings around the train station, looks smug enough to have had something to do with it. Forced casual stance. Hand on the mobile phone – no, pager – in his pocket. This is why I never take public transport.

There are others, but they're not here yet. Our best option is to slip around the back of the bus and sprint until we get into the back-alleys. They won't be expecting us to go right back to Downing Street.

I relay as much to John; he stares at the policeman for roughly thirty seconds before giving up. "No. I've no idea how you figured that out. Okay, Genius, lead on."

It's a little foolish that the compliment and the slightly demeaning moniker make me smile. I wrestle control of my face back from him, grab his hand, and tug him around to the other side of the bus quickly, so that we can get out before 'backup' gets here. Therein, however, lies the problem.

They're already here.

"Go!" I hiss, pulling John's arm and taking off down the nearest street. I can hear his startled exhale behind me, the way his fingers tighten around mine and his footsteps quickly sync with my pace, and the adrenaline is incredible.

We hurtle down the street and through a rat-run of alleyways. I think we're getting relatively further and further away from Whitehall, but let's focus on one thing at a time. Evade the police, and then find Mycroft's PA, who I'm ninety-nine per cent sure isn't actually called Anthea.

Eventually, the alley we're sprinting down runs out; moving too fast to stop myself, I barely see the police car before the two of us barrel right into the bonnet.

I pick myself up off the ground, ready to sprint off again. "Sherlock," John breathes. He's frozen, staring behind me, his face still and set in – is that resignation? I can't tell.

A strong, copper's hand claps down onto my shoulder. I flinch; is this it? Because that's almost demeaning. We've run on and off for three days only to be knocked down – literally – by a police car. I look up at John again; he's _smiling._

"Why do you Holmeses always have to be so dramatic?" Lestrade growls. "Come on. Mrs Hudson's been having kittens."

_fin_


	14. Epilogue

Eighteen Hours Earlier

_Seagulls and waves and the babble of children and lovers and locals._

_It's like a dream, but then life always seems dreamy when he wakes up and knows that his lover has lain next to him and touched his hair and watched him as he slept. Waking up on a beach in Bondi with a half-naked, sandy Detective Inspector pressed against his side, still idly stroking a finger up and around the slope of his freckly shoulder, is just a bonus, albeit a good one._

_"What time is it?" Mycroft asks, cracking an eye open to take in the gentle, half-asleep expression of Greg's weather-beaten face. _

_The detective shrugs. "Does it matter?" _

_No, it doesn't, not really. They can lie here all day and all night if they want to, sleep until two in the morning and then shag until the shops open for breakfast if the fancy takes them. He sighs. It's a pity he can't get used to this._

_A shadow falls in front of Mycroft's sun; he opens the other eye to see a group of young women in bikinis flicking out a towel in front of them, blocking their view of the ocean. He can't bring himself to mind much, but he sits up anyway. _

_"Oh! Sorry, are we in your way? Do you mind if we sit here?"_

_Whatever people said about Australians, Mycroft muses, he certainly hasn't found it the case. Perhaps Greg's teasing about how awkward he looks in casual clothing means that people still pander to his authority a little, but everyone has been scrupulously polite. He opens his mouth, but his lover beats him to it._

_"Not at all. We were about to move anyway."_

_Mycroft wants to say something along the lines of _oh, we were, were we?_, but the Australian girls giggle amongst themselves. "Oh my God! You're English!"_

_Before the flicker of jealousy can even begin to stir in his stomach, Greg gives him an indulgent smile. "And gay," he says brightly. "Come on, love, we're going back to the bach."_

_The Detective Inspector picks up his towel, trails his fingers along Mycroft's arm down to his wrist, then heads back up the beach towards their little rent-a-bach. He blinks after him for a moment, not quite oblivious to the titters coming from the group of girls in front of him, feeling the beginnings of arousal raise its head again in the pit of his stomach. Then he shakes his head. "Excuse me, ladies," he says politely, getting up and trying not to run to catch up with his lover for fear of seeming too desperate. _

_Before he met Gregory Lestrade, Mycroft had thought it impossible to muster the energy to engage in sexual relations as often as the two of them have this past week; every time Greg says or does something that makes his skin tingle and his cock twitch, something in the back of his mind voices an incredulous, _again?

_Not that he's complaining, of course. _

_He catches the detective on the doorstep of the bach, his arms looping instinctively around that muscular, brown waist as they stumble the sand from the beach over the tiled floor and kick the door shut._

_"Why do you have to be so attractive?" he pouts, burying his nose in the thick silvery hair and sniffing the smell of the sea. "Those girls were at least twenty years younger than you and they were still undressing you with their eyes. Not that there's much undressing to do," he points out, giving the loose shorts a tug to prove his point and divesting Greg of the only item of clothing he was wearing. _

_The DI laughs, catching Mycroft's head in his strong hands. "It certainly starts to explain the rising sex crime rate around the world. They're probably _lucky_ I was very definitely not interested."_

_Greg presses his lips clumsily to the Government's temple and hooks his fingers into the waistband of Mycroft's own swimming trunks, tossing them easily to the floor. The two men clutch at each other's flesh, drawing them closer, feeling the rub of salt and sand against their skins and tasting it against their mouths. "Bedroom," Greg orders._

_"Why bother?"_

_There's certainly no reason they can't just finish whatever it is they've started right there on the floor. It's not like anyone's about to walk into their private bach. But Greg gives him a long, hard stare that sends shivers up and down Mycroft's spine and makes his cock jump eagerly towards his older lover. "Because you're going to want a bed under you for what I have planned."_

_So he scrambles as fast as he can to the unnecessarily large bedroom and slams his lover none-too-gently against the wall, Greg's little yelp spurring him on to press their lips together, hard and bruising, and the tiny shades of pain from where they've done this before in the last week only serve to make this more intoxicating, more incredible, that Greg has sated himself so often on Mycroft's body and he _still_ comes back, again and again until neither man can quite believe their luck._

_They both know this isn't normal. _

_Greg slips one of his hands between them and takes hold of Mycroft's right middle finger, dragging it up between them and slipping it carefully into his mouth. The government advisor catches his breath, staring at his lover's gesture, the little glimpses of pink tongue around his own finger. He'd wanted to make this last, but it's not going to._

_"Greg." _

_"I know."_

_From there they move quickly, onto the bed, the taller covering every inch of the shorter's skin as though he can protect him from the world like this, pressing gentle kisses along his jaw and down his neck. "I love you," Mycroft whispers. Greg smiles, but his only response is to wrap tanned arms around his lover's back and pull him closer. _

_The younger man's wet fingers slip between the DI's legs; with a breathy grunt, two slide in without trouble. They've done this so many times it can hardly matter anymore._

_The feeling of being inside Greg makes Mycroft's heart squeeze around his lungs, holding them captive, forcing him still; they're warm against each other, their breathing synchronised, Greg's breath in for every breath out of Mycroft's, recycling each other's air until they're dizzy. There's been time for fast already, so when Mycroft finally takes a shuddering breath and shifts his hips in and out it's slow and warm and easy, and Greg's low groans blend with Mycroft's steady keening to make the harmony of some obscure love song._

_After, Greg curls up in the hollow of Mycroft's underarm and breathes in the smell of his sweat as their heartbeats slow. "We've got to stop doing that," Greg voices finally. "We're getting old. I'm going to break something."_

_Mycroft chuckles, giddy. "I think we would have broken something by now." He grabs the sheet off the bed as he gets up and drapes it around himself. "Tea?" he offers, delivering a kiss to Greg's forehead. The DI smiles up at him. _

_"Thank you, my be-toga-ed Adonis," the stocky man replies. Mycroft laughs. _

_The bedroom is a few degrees warmer than the rest of the bach now, although that might be because the French doors are still open. He pulls the sheet tighter around him as he puts the kettle on in the kitchen and continues absently into the living area._

_The woman sitting primly on the white settee clears her throat. "Sir."_

_Mycroft almost drops the sheet. "Miss Martin! Good God, girl, give me some warning next time!" _

_She smiles delicately and adjusts her skirt over her knees. "Sorry, sir."_

_"I thought I instructed you _not_ to contact me even if the government was in crisis," he reprimands sternly, attempting to regain a smidgeon of dignity he lost when his assistant saw him wearing only a sheet._

_"And I'm very sorry, sir, but it's not the government," Samantha Martin replies coolly, firmly placing a thin manila file on the glass coffee table. "It's Sherlock."_

_Mycroft looks around, his heart sinking and jittering with a familiar worry as his boyfriend wanders butt-naked and gorgeous into the living room. "Love, do we have any – Jesus Christ!"_

_The woman on the settee pointedly averts her eyes as the DI grabs a cushion from an armchair to protect his modesty._

_Mycroft bites his lip. "Gregory, love… I _promise_ I will make it up to you."_


End file.
